Heroes Under Drinking Age: Beta
by oneinsanenutjob
Summary: When wanted criminal Shego shows up in New York City, high school junior Jake meets Kim Possible - 20 years young supergirl. How is Kim holding up in life away from home, and how does Jake plan on handling the magical safety of the entire country? Rated for violence, just to be safe. Eventually crosses with Danny Phantom and Randy Cunningham.
1. Chapter 1-1

Part I: A Little Extra Help

Chapter I:

Jake

America. Land of the free and home of magical. Well, a lot of places were home of the magical, but the further Jake got into his dragon training over the years, the more it felt like everything that possibly could live in this country, did live in this country. Most countries were so much smaller than America and were geographically similar all over the place, but America just _had _to be so diverse, didn't it? A good eighty percent of different kinds magical creatures that lived in America could be found in New York City alone – which made perfect sense when it came to his training, now that he thought about it – and that would be totally chill with Jake, except that it was making his training last an _eternity_.

There were plenty of other dragon kids within a year of his age that had been admitted to the dragon order, and all of them had already finished their training. They were taking up bigger positions in their respective countries. He heard that Fred Nerk over in Australia didn't even have his Dragon Master following him around on the job anymore. But then, here was Jake. Seventeen and counting, finishing up his junior year in high school, and he was still drawing centaurian territory boarders on his map of the states.

He was trying to remember if the east and west border ran through Oklahoma City or the pan handle when the teacher said, "Mr. Long!" Jake flinched so hard he dropped his pencil. "Since you've been staring at that map for so long, how about you tell us about the reasoning behind the boarder of the Louisiana Purchace?"

"Uh…" Jake rolled his finger-tips across his desk top nervously. "I'm sure it had something to do with – the, uh…" Glancing at his map, he took a quick note of where the Louisiana Purchase lined up with the centaur territories (_Definitely the panhandle, then_) before forcing magic thoughts aside. "Well it was a, uhm, French thing…right?"

Jake's U.S. History teacher just sighed. "You're not going to pass this class with those answers, Jake," she said, using that disappointed tone that Jake had become immune to over almost three years of high school. "I suggest you cut back on riding that skate board around everywhere and start using that time to study. You will all be seniors next year," she continued, addressing the rest of the class as well. "It's time you start thinking seriously about college choices." She spared Jake an extra glance. "Should you go to college at all."

Jake didn't meet her eyes.

"Yo, Jakey!"

Jake kicked his board into submission on the sidewalk and turned back to the school steps. "Hey, Trixie. What up, Spud?"

"Hey, bro," Spud dropped his own board onto the ground and started rolling down the concrete. Jake and Trixie followed. "There's a new skate park opening down town tonight. Are you out, or are you out? …Wait."

"Sorry guys," Jake apologized, shrugging his bag on his shoulder. "Gramps wants me down at the shop all night to get ready for some pixie convention or somethin' going on this weekend. I was actually debating between going to school tomorrow or skipping to get some real sleep for once this week."

Trixie scoffed. "Jakey, if you keep this up, you'll end up repeating a year! Gramps already told you that you're training will end when you graduate, do you really want to spend a whole 'nother year cramped up in that electronics shop?"

"Don't forget college, dude," Spud added. "Repeats don't look so hot on applications, and we've got like, _months_, before we start those, dude. I'm already freaking out a little!" Spud brought his face close to Jake's and pulled at his face. "Am I getting stress lines yet?"

Jake didn't answer. He swerved down and back up the street curb to avoid a group of freshmen. "Anyway, you guys go have fun without me. I'll catch you next weekend, sound good?"

Trixie sighed. "Whatever, Jake. You have fun at your "pixie convention" or whatever."

"What happens at a pixie convention, anyway?" Spun pondered, scratching the hair under his hat. Jake wondered about that hat sometimes; he hadn't seen Spud ever wash it and he'd had the thing for years. "Is it like, comic conventions? Do their comic books depict dramatized versions of the lives of pixies lost in the strange and awesome world of humans; humans that they make clever costumes for and hold contests do see who does it the best?"

Jake and Trixie shared a tired sigh.

"It's a diplomatic thing, I think," Jake shrugged. "Pixies from all over the country come around for it. It wouldn't be that big of a deal, but the ones from Ohio and the ones from Michigan get into fights all the time."

"Yo, like the ogres at the Red Sox game last year?" Trixie shivered. "Dang, those guys really knew how to use a bat."

"They boldly went where no bat has gone before," Spud said. "I think I still have splinters where there should never be splinters."

"Yeah, I'm still sorry about that one, by the way."

"Don't worry about it Jakey," Trixie gave him a hard pat on the back. "We're used to it. Friends for real, right?" She held out her fist.

Jake gave it a bump. "Friends for life. Thanks, guys."

When they came up the turn to the shop, they waved good bye and Jake continued the last block by himself. When he came up on the shop he kicked his board up into his hand and stood on the sidewalk for a moment, looking through at the windows and up at the sign above the door. He'd been going to this place almost every day after school for years – since middle school, when his powers really came in. When he turned sixteen he'd started actually working for the shop; he even set up a website. The site had made more sales than the store itself had in decades – which was okay, since it was really just a front for a kind of magical headquarters, nowadays. Gramps hadn't even let Jake put the building address on the website. It made money, though, and that got Jake a real, though meager, paycheck, so it was cool with him.

He let out a tired sigh. _I'm never getting away from here, am I?_

It was a stupid thought, really. In a little over a year he'd graduate and probably never have to come back to the dingy little shop again. He probably would, on occasion, but his duties as the American Dragon promised to take him all over the country. In a few months, Gramps promised to start taking him on jobs and missions out of The City – even out of state. He'd be spending his senior year going on long weekend trips to visit the homes of the pixies that would be arriving tomorrow and borders of the centaur territories in Oklahoma, maybe even a werewolf hide out in California.

He can have all that and more, but step one? Finish high school.

Putting his game face on, Jake swung open the shop door. "Hey, yo, G! What you got for my today?" Jake threw his bag on the counter and slid his board underneath, looking around the empty shop. He took a peak behind the curtain into the back room; also empty. "G?" Jake lifted the curtain as he entered. It was just as cluttered as usual. On the table were a slew of potion ingredients and several books that had been left open. Jake absently flipped a page in one of the books (Magic and Mystic Remedies for the Mind) before searching the room again with his eyes.

"Fu Dog?"

There was a flush from the bathroom and Fu Dog walked out on his hind legs, flipping the pages of yesterday's newspaper through his paws. "Hey, kid, did'ja hear about the bar on 56th – the one with the mermaid tank in the bar counter? Got robbed last night; they won't be opening again for another week."

"Fu, for the millionth time, I'm still only seventeen," Jake said, picking up one of the phials from the desk and sloshing around a purple, jelly, substance.

"Sure, humans have to wait for the big two-one, but the legal drinking age for dragons is two hundred lunar cycles. You could have been partying the night away months ago," Fu told him, snatching the phial from Jake and setting it back in its holder.

"What? Why did Gramps not tell me?"

"Oh, you know the old man. Responsibilities and all that. Actually, just pretend I never told you that. Last thing we need is for your cousin Greggy to find out this summer and – ah bah-ba boo!" Fu Dog shook his head. "Anyway, Gramps has gone with Haley to handle a unicorn stampede in Central Park. He said to tell you to stay put till he got back."

"Stay put?" Jake slumped down in the desk chair. "I could be helping!"

"It's just a couple of pretty, quasi-mortal horses, they can take care of it by themselves." Fu threw himself down on the couch, flipping through more pages. "Y'know, Haley's as old as you were when you started your Dragon Training. She's improved quite a bit, too. Not quite at your level, but, you know, she's doing pretty well."

"Obviously," Jake scoffed. "No one can live up to the expectations of the Am Drag."

"Yeah, you keep that ego, kid." Fu threw the paper onto the coffee table. "Anyhoo, your grandpa wants you reading up on you pixie politics for this weekend." He picked a huge book up off the couch and tossed it towards Jake. Jake caught it against chest with a grunt.

"Pixie politics?" he groaned to himself. "Aw, man." Jake tossed the book down onto the desk. "I _could_ bore myself to sleep, or…" Jake turned his gaze up to the door frame. The place was pretty old, but with the amount of damage dragon training usually did to the place, bits and pieces of the place were fairly new. Including the door frame that looked like it could probably hold a little more weight than just the curtain. Say…five feet, six inches of manly muscle? But pull ups were beyond Jake today, so instead he pulled out his tail, got a good grip on the door frame with it, and pulled himself upside down.

"As much as we all appreciate your workout schedule, big boy," Fu Dog complained, reaching for the remote. "I'm ganna have to agree with Gramps this time. Remember the last pixie convention you went to? I'm still pulling the dust out of my wrinkles." To prove his point, Fu pulled a layer of fur away from his stomach and shook it. Sure enough, little sparkles of dust showered onto the sofa.

"Books have never really been my thing, Fu," Jake argued, lifting his upper body to do a few crunches. "G always tells me to take dragon business more seriously; this is just my way of showing it." Jake twisted mid-air, pulling in his tail, and landed back on his feet. "And it's been a whole year since then. How many more issues could the pixies have possibly have thought up?"

Fu scoffed and clicked on the T.V. set. "You'd be surprised. The little buggers are stubborn."

Jake stretched his arms over his head, popping his back, while the dog flipped through channels. After a few moments, Jake pulled out his cell phone and Fu settled on a local news channel. Jake wasn't really listening to what was being said on the T.V. until Fu called, "Kid, check this out."

"…some sort of stampede in Central Park," the news caster was saying. "People are saying that at least two dozen horses, decorated like unicorns, are charging through the park, scattering tourists, dirt, and chaos, everywhere." The view on screen looked like it was coming from someone's cell phone. It was moving around too much to get a very good look at what was happening, but Jake was able to make out the shimmering shapes of the unicorns cantering across the grass and sidewalks.

Jake squinted at the fuzzy screen. There was something moving between the horses. It wasn't clear enough to quite make out, but Jake caught flashes of green. "Yo, Fu, do you see that?"

"See what?"

"There's someone in the middle of the stampede." Jake stepped closer to the T.V. "It looks like…a person."

"Haley, maybe?"

"No," Jake shook his head. "I think it's a woman. With…is her skin green?"

Before Jake could get a better look, the screen cut back to the news caster's face. Jake stood in silence for a few moments with his arms crossed and one foot tapping on the floor. There were several creatures he could think of with green skin, but none that had any reason to be running around central park, panicking unicorns in broad daylight.

"I'm ganna go and help them," Jake declared and about faced. He was halfway to the back door to the alley before Fu jumped in front of him.

"Hold on, kid!" Fu spread his front paws out. "The old man said they could handle it. I'm sure they'll be fine. Besides, you're sister's a lot better with the goodie-goodie magical creatures than you are."

"This is your way of breaking it to me that we're bringing her to the pixie convention, isn't it?"

Fu Dog flinched. "Okay, yeah. But at least _she's _done the reading."

Jake just rolled his eyes and used Fu's head to vault over him and open the door. "Be back in twenty!" he shouted over his shoulder. Before his feet could hit the concrete, he shouted, "Dragon Up!" A flash of fire later, and he was thirty feet above the roof tops, Central Park in his sights.

Fu Dog dropped onto all fours in the doorway and sighed. "Kids."

Back inside, there was a faint jingling noise from the front door that had Fu's head spinning. "Hello?" A call came from the shop. "Anybody here?"

* * *

**So there's this side (which I'm calling the Beta side) to this story, and then there's the other side (the Alpha side) that features Randy Cunningham, Ninth Grade Ninja, Danny Phantom, and everything that they're at the same time. I'll be posting both sides separately here, and both will eventually be posted on my tumblr (same user) along with all the random art I draw for it.**

**Reviews are appreciated :)**


	2. Chapter 1-2

Central Park was beautiful in the afternoon light. Well, it normally was, but something about a couple dozen unicorns reflecting sunlight made the whole thing even more beautiful. Okay, maybe thinking about a heard of scared unicorns as beautiful was a little twisted, but, hey, a lot of things were twisted in New York City. He figured whatever mystical overlord that watched over The City could let this one slide. Oh, wait. That was him.

Either way, Jake could hear the shouts and the whinnies over the screams and chaos of New York traffic almost three blocks away. By the time the actual scene came into sight, he was surprised there wasn't even more press all over the situation. He scoffed judgingly at his own thought. For a 'secret' magical community, this stuff happened all the time. The press probably cared more about the First Lady's toe buckle than _another _psychotic happening in the Big Apple.

When the scene was directly below him, Jake dove into the branches of a near-by tree. It's not that he was worried about getting spotted as a dragon, the people on the ground were plenty distracted, he'd just been working on his dives lately. This was a great one, too; he slid right between the branches and transformed again just in time to land on one of the lower branches. Below him, the unicorns were charging down the sidewalk, but at least they were all headed in the same direction. He quickly scanned the heard for Haley and Gramps, but neither were anywhere in sight.

Just as he was about to jump into action, the back of the herd came into view. "What the...?" he mumbled to himself while watching what appeared to be one of the City's police horses, mounted by a woman with striking red hair. There was no way she was one of the officers, but the way she rode the horse was skilled and practiced. She had a pretty killer outfit, but she definitely wasn't a New Yorker.

Caught off guard, the herd moved beyond his tree before he could pull himself together. It looked like whoever that was had everything under control. Maybe the whole thing could go down without any more magical interference - maybe that's where Grandpa and Haley had gone off to.

Before Jake could act on his thoughts, there was a loud, terrified, whinny from the front of the herd. Jake wasn't close enough to see detail, but somewhere at the front there were flashes of green light and it was putting all the unicorns back on edge. The police horse reared on it's back legs, throwing the girl towards the ground. Before Jake could blink, he had his wings out and was gliding through the air just in time to slide across the pavement and catch the girl in his arms.

He waited for her to flip her hair out of her face before helping her to her feet. "You okay, uh..."

"Kim," she said, pulling herself up and dusting off her pants. She had pretty green eyes and there were little marks on her face where freckles had faded over time. "I'm Kim."

"Jake."

"Listen," she started, "it's not safe here, you should probably - look out!" Kim grabbed Jake by the jacket collar and rolled them both out of the way before a pair of hooves slammed across the ground behind him. "You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm cool," Jake said, brushing her hands off his arms. "But what are _you_ doing here?"

"Look, now isn't a very good time." Kim grabbed a hold of the rains of the horse she was riding and threw herself over its back. "Just get somewhere safe!" she shouted before riding towards the retreating herd.

Jake shook his head. "I don't think so."

Swinging up onto a unicorn was easy. Getting her under control quickly was a little harder, but it was do able. In a few moments, he was caught up with Kim, where she was attempting to round up the unicorns on a patch of the grass between sidewalks. Jake wasn't all that surprised to see it not working. Unicorns weren't likely to listen to a human on a regular old horse. Jake didn't know how many stampedes Kim had settled in the past, but the frustration was beginning to show on her face as she chased down another unicorn that was straying from the group.

Seeing the stray headed his way, Jake took the opportunity. It took three years of unicorn-riding training, but he managed to pull his steed to screeching stop in the path of the other unicorn. The unicorn slid to a halt in front of him, whinnying angrily. Before his own ride could buck up underneath him, Jake let out a deep, growling, dragon roar of his own, flashing two rows of pointed teeth. The other unicorn immediately turned tail and galloped back to the still-chaotic herd.

He didn't normally like roaring at anything like that - it felt a little too...animal, for his own tastes, and his grandpa didn't smile at the idea - but he'd caught other dragons doing it before. There was a short time when he thought the whole monster-roar thing was cool, but the novelty wore off pretty quickly when magical creatures started acting more scared of him than respective.

"Now that's how you...huh?" Jake turned to gloat, but the police horse was galloping, riderless, towards the streets. "Oh, _now_ she's gone," he grumbled to himself. Off to his left, there was another collective of whinnying as the unicorns began fleeing across the lawn again. "Hey!" he shouted, kicking his steed to follow. "Wait up!"

Just as he was catching up to the back of the herd again, there was a thump behind him and his unicorn yelled in protest as her back legs almost gave out from under her. Jake turned behind him in alarm and got a sight full of pre-teen sister. Most of her hair was pulled back into a neat pony-tail and her pink top looked hardly worse for wear than when she walked out of her room that morning.

"Haley!" he scolded. "Where have you been?"

"Do you know how hard it is to make a decent distraction now-a-days?" Haley shouted, flipping her bangs out of her face. "Press these days, I _swear_."

"Fill me in on that later, Hales," Jake told her, turning back around to the herd. "Where's Gramps?"

"He flew down to the DMC to get someone to take the unicorns somewhere before city police can. He should be here soon. Hopefully with someone that can pass for human, this time. What about you, weren't you supposed to wait at the shop? I can handle myself sometimes, you know."

"_Later_, Haley," he said again. "Now would be a good time to start some of that 'handling' you keep telling me about.

Haley scoffed behind him. "Whatever, just get me closer to the front."

It took a minute or two and some serious speed boosts on the part of Haley's wings - which, to be fair, had gotten larger over the years - but they eventually made it up to the lead unicorns. While the ones in the back had seemed to be acting more off of the collective terror of the others, Jake could see the legitimate fear in the eyes of those in the front. Something must had seriously spooked them to get them this agitated, and Jake wanted to know exactly what it was.

_After_ his sister wasn't standing on the rear end of a moving animal.

"Be careful, Haley!" he told her.

"I got it, I got it!"

Jake wondered if he was that full of it at her age.

There was a moment where Jake's heart skipped a beat and time almost seemed to pause because his little sister had just jumped off a moving unicorn with the intent of landing on a stampeding one, but, just like that, she had landed. Roughly and on her butt, but she had made it. Jake let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

He wasn't sure how she did it, but Haley had a _way_ with some - okay, most - magical creatures that Jake just couldn't figure out. He could understand the big ones, and freaky ones, and the ones that went bump in the night; but for some reason the most basic ones, like unicorns, weren't quite as far into his playing field like they were into Haley's. With a few strokes of the mane and kind words that Jake couldn't make out over the pounding of hooves, the front unicorn was slowing down. Through one way or another, probably a magical empathetic creature kind of thing, the rest of the herd was slowing down too, until they were all trotting to a nervous stop.

"See?" Haley bragged, bringing her unicorn around to Jake's and gave him that blinding smile she could never get rid of. "Not so hard."

Jake just shook his head. He was about to suggest they leave before whatever distraction Haley laid out for curious press stopped working when he remembered why he came to help in the first place. Looking around the Park, he couldn't see any more of those green flashes or the mysterious green woman he'd seen on T.V. back at the shop. That Kim girl had disappeared too. It hadn't occurred to him when he first saw her, but he couldn't get her face out of his head. It wasn't even the normal "she's totally hot" not forgetting her face, it was more of a "she is incredibly familiar where have I seen her before?" kind of remembering.

He did, however, spot someone else walking towards them. "Gramps!" he called, hopping off the unicorn. "There you are!"

Before his grandfather could scold him, a dozen or so women, probably witches, approached him. They were all dressed rather casually, but a few of them had forgotten to ditch their pointed hats. One with a large, purple, hat and pretty blue eyes shook his hand. "Thank you so much, American Dragon, sir," she said. "We can take it from here."

"Oh, it's no problem, gorgeous." He added a nonchalant hand-wave for good measure. "All part of the job."

Several of the younger witches giggled before the one with the eyes had them all roping up a few unicorns each. Haley stalked over from where she handed over the unicorn she'd been riding. "Hey, I did all of the work," she complained. "You weren't even supposed to be here."

"You didn't do _all_ the work," Jake countered. "I did some pretty sweet riding myself."

"But she is right, Jake," Gramps said as he approached. "I left instructions with Fu Dog that you were to stay at the shop and read up on your politics - in preparation for today's lesson.

"Okay, so I didn't listen," at a stern look from his grandfather, he added, "again. But it's not like the two pages I would have gotten through before you got back would be that much help anyway, right?"

Grandpa sighed, but Haley said, "He's right, Grandpa. You could leave him alone all night and he wouldn't get past the table of contents."

"So I'm a hands-on learner, big deal!" Jake rubbed and hand through the gel in his hair. "We've always known that. Let's just..." he sighed, shoulders dropping. "Let's just get back to the shop and I'll read up on that book."

Gramps gave him a long look while Jake scuffed his shoes in the dirt. There was a myriad of hoof prints marking out the grass and foot prints where the witches had walked through the mud left behind. Half an idea had started to form in his head during the silence, when Gramps said, "Perhaps, a different lesson would better suit today," he said. Jake's head shot up. "I want both of you back at the shop in ten minutes. No excuses."

Gramps turned to walk towards the witch with the blue eyes and Jake called, "Thank you so much, Grandpa!"

When he was out of earshot, Haley scoffed. "How is _that_ fair?"she asked. "I even did the reading."

"Not all of us can be dragons _and _skip grades, Haley," Jake told her, messing up her hair - something that was a lot easier when she was shorter than his chest. "Now let's go."

Jake, and Haley following, jogged back down the line of dirt and tossed grass that the unicorns had run through in their stampede. He was sure Haley was looking for a good place to transform and take off quickly, but he had other ideas. When they reached around the start of the stampede, Haley found a good spot and started towards it, but Jake had other ideas. He stopped where he was and started looking around on the ground.

"Jake!" Haley called from the bushes. "What are you waiting for?"

"He gave us ten minutes," he called back. "I can make it in two, go on ahead."

"Oh, no," she said, shaking her head so her hair swung and the little beads in her pony-tail holder clicked while she came to stand beside him. "You are _not_ doing stuff without me." She planted her feet together and tried to following his line of sight to the ground. "What are we looking for?"

"Foot prints." At the questioning look Jake got, he elaborated. "I wasn't going to come down here, but one of the news channels back the shop was showing someone's cell phone video from when the stampede started. From the outside, it looked like a bunch of crazy unicorns, but there was something in the middle."

"Something," Haley asked, "or someone?"

"Exactly. It looked like a woman, but she had this green skin." Jake nagged at his memory of the video. "It might have just been the crummy lighting, or-"

"Some other magical creature was freaking out the unicorns," Haley finished for him. He really hated it when she did that. "It's rare enough for unicorns to be out in public daylight like that, but there were so many of them."

"I didn't even know that many lived in Central Park," Jake added.

"They don't. There are normally quite a few, sure, but pixies and unicorns get along pretty well and the number of unicorns around here usually goes up just before and after the pixie convention." Haley took Jake's blank look with practiced ease. "What? If you'd read up on that book, you'd know that, too."

"So whatever we're looking for has green skin, doesn't like unicorns, and probably knows about the pixie convention this weekend. If there's more unicorns around, they can make even more chaos." Jake gave his sister a pat on the back. "And that's what I have you around for."

Haley rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Anyway, we should probably head back. There's no way we're finding any foot prints in this mess without something special from Fu Dog. I'm sure we can come back later."

"Yeah, yeah, okay," he agreed and walked with her back the the bushes. "Hey, if you've read it already, do you think you could give me the SparkNotes version?"

"In your dreams, doofus," she said, but they were both smiling as they took off above the tree tops.

* * *

**Thank you guys so much for the support! I couldn't ask for anything more. ****I hope I can update pretty regularly since it's summer and all, but you never know what could happen. **

******-One**


	3. Chapter 1-3

Jake and Haley made it back to the shop with minutes to kill. They landed and dragon downed - as Haley had taken to calling it - in the alley besides the store.

"But I don't get it," Jake was saying as they walked onto the street. "If they live in the same state, and have the same history, what does it matter if one group put the word 'state' in the name and one didn't?"

"Out of everything, I would have expected you to get his one, Jake." Haley shook her head. "It's practically a sports thing!"

"College sports, sure," Jake argued. "But I've never really-" Jake stopped when he got a look through the front window of the store. There was someone inside.

He put a hand out and Haley stopped. "What is it?" she asked.

"There's someone in the shop," Jake told her. The guy inside didn't look particularly dangerous or anything. He had a short mess of blond hair on his head and Jake thought he saw freckles. Jake had yet to meet anyone truly hazardous that had freckles, but there's a first time for everything. Jake was pretty sure it was Fu Dog on the floor, that the guy was talking to, but he didn't look magical. One of those people that talked to animals that don't talk back, probably.

"You left the shop unattended, didn't you?" Haley accused, placing her hands on her hips.

"Pfft, no" Jake scoffed. "Fu totally counts as an attendant."

"And when the costumer doesn't speak magical underground?"

"Oh, come on! I was gone for twenty minutes, tops. And we never get customers."

"Still your fault."

"Alright, fine," Jake admitted. "I'll totally take the blame later. Listen, how about you go around back and crack the spine on that pixie book. I'll handle this guy."

Haley shrugged and moved to walk back to the alley. "You want me to make it look read, or partially touched?" she asked.

Jake thought for a moment. "Partially touched is good. We don't wan to kid ourselves."

"You so owe me!" she called over her shoulder before disappearing around the corner.

Jake took a deep breath and opened the door. The bell jingled weakly as he entered, getting both the man and Fu's attention. Fu looked fine, where he sat, still dog-like, on the floor, but Jake focused his attention on the guy wearing pants. "Hello, I'm so sorry about the dog," he apologized. While he spoke, he moved around behind the shop counter. A quick glance past the curtain showed Haley throwing herself down on the desk chair and flipping a few pages int he pixie book. "I should have put up the closed sign when I left. Is there something I can help you with?"

The man, who looked a bit younger up close, wasted no time. "Well, I'm Ron. Ron Stoppable," he introduced, full swagger and buffing his nails on his shirt. "You've probably heard of me."

Jake wasn't sure how to respond to that when he was drawing a complete and total blank. "Can't say I have, sorry."

He didn't seem all that surprised, but some of the pompousness fell off his demeanor. "Well, you must have at least heard of my girlfriend. Kim? Kim Possible?"

"Doesn't ring a- wait." _Kim was the girl in the park's name, wasn't it?_ "Red head, green eyes," he held a hand up around his height, "yay-big?"

"That's KP! Teen hero - well, we're not teens anymore, but the concept still stands. Freelance heroine, is what she's using now, I think. I haven't really looked at the website myself since high school."

"Okay." Jake attempted to stay on some sort of conversation track. "So what can I help you wi- yo," Jake stopped when something poked out of the pocket in Ron's pants. In all his years in the magical community, Jake was pretty sure he hadn't seen any poor creature quite so..._naked._ "What is _that_?"

"What? Oh," Ron pulled the thing out of his pocket and placed it on his shoulder. "This is Rufus."

"_Hi!_" It squeaked and waved at him. At least Jake was pretty sure it said hi.

Jake gave an awkward wave back with his finger tips. "It...He talks?" His attempt to pretend talking animals weren't an everyday occurrence for him was broken a little by the sheer strangeness of the...thing.

"He's a naked mole rat, and yes, he does. Well, kind of. Takes a special person to _really_ understand Rufus, am I right buddy?" Rufus squeaked and nodded. "Anyway, your dog talks," he said, matter-o-factly, lifting a finger in Fu's direction.

"What?" Jake laughed, hoping it didn't sound as forced as it did to Jake's own ears. A lot of things sounded different to a dragon's ears than to a human's, but, sadly, this was not one of those things. "I don't know what your talking about?" But then, cover stories were never really his thing; just another reason he had Haley.

"Gigs up, kid," Fu said, startling him a little. "He already got me."

"What-but, how?"

"Psh," Ron flicked his wrist in the effort of nonchalance. "Freaky creatures is _so_ year one hero stuff."

"_Yup, yup,_" Rufus echoed. "_Year one._"

"Okay..." Jake ran a hand through his hair. "So your girlfriend is a 'freelance heroine', and you know about talking animals."

"Well we both do the whole crime fighting thing," Ron explained. "But I'm just the side kick. Kim handles most of the big things."

"Uh-huh." Jake tried to process things slowly. "So what do a couple of crime fighters want with an electronics shop with a talking dog?"

"Well, long story short, about a year ago we ran into this girl who said if we ever stopped through the Big Apple and needed some help to come by this address." He pulled a crumpled piece of notebook paper out of one of his pockets and handed it to Jake. "See?"

Sure enough, 10048 Canal Street was scripted across the lines in vaguely familiar handwriting. Something about the loop to the letters was itching at his memory, but he couldn't quite place it.

"Why would they direct you to an electronics shop?" Jake asked.

"Beats me. Honestly, I missed most of that adventure, but Kim said it was reliable, and I trust her. So here I am."

"Where is she?" Fu Dog asked. "This Kim person?"

"Not sure, exactly." Ron rubbed the back of his head. "We were supposed to come together, but there was something going on in Central Park, and she wanted to check it out, so she sent me here ahead. I hope she's okay."

"She's-" Jake hesitated. So the girl at the park definitely was this Kim Possible girl, but he couldn't just say that he saw her at the Park without giving away that he was there, too, and he wasn't sure how much Ron knew about the magical world. Talking animals was one thing, dragons and unicorns was another. "I'm sure she's fine," he said reassuringly. "I doubt anything she could find in Central Park could compare to what a 'freelance heroine' is used to."

Ron smiled and opened his mouth to say something when something started beeping. He looked down at a large watch on his wrist, startled. Well, Jake was pretty sure it was a watch. The screen was flashing and the ring sounded kind of like a cell phone. "Oh, I keep forgetting about this thing," he said, lifting his wrist to look at it. He pressed a button on the face. "Kim!"

"_Ron_!" A voice came out of the watch. "_Where are you?_"

"At that shop on Canal Street, like you told me to be," he answered.

"_Oh! Did you find him_?"

"Well I was _working _on it." Ron put his other hand on his hip. "I was all over it until you called. I was just about to ask for...what's his name again?"

"_Jake, Jake Long!_" Jake startled at his name. "_And-ah! Hold on!_" There was a flair of white noise and what sounded like glass breaking. "_Y'know what, it can wait. Get to fifth avenue, I found Shego!_"

"Really?" Ron picked Rufus off his shoulder and put him back in his pocket. "I'll get there as soon as I can," he said and moved to leave but Jake practically jumped over the counter.

"Wait!" Ron stopped mid-step. Jake put a hand on his chest. "I'm Jake Long."

Ron's eyes widened. "Oh," he chuckled. "Well that wasn't so hard." Rufus made an agreeing kind of noise from his pocket.

"What do you need me for?"

Ron tugged at his shirt collar. "Y'know, Kim never really said."

"Well," Jake tried, "why are you in New York?"

"Oh, that's easy." Ron pulled a photo out of one of his pockets (_How much stuff does he keep in there?_) "This lady," he said, placing the photo on the counter for Jake to look at.

The picture showeda blurry shot of a woman with long black, hair, sharp features, and "Is her skin green?"

"Her name's Shego," Ron said instead of answering. "We used to fight her all the time when commercial villainy was a bigger thing."

Jake lifted an eyebrow. "Commercial villainy?"

"Y'know, crazy guys in big towers where they make doomsday devices to the soundtracks of their own evil laughter? ... No?" he sighed. "Everything was so much simpler in high school."

"Okay..." Jake reluctantly let that go and picked up the picture. "So what's so bad about her?"

"Well for starters, she's wanted in about twelve different counties."

"Twelve? For what?"

"Just about everything, really. Robbery, trespassing, theft, arson, kidnapping. The list of what she's _not_ wanted for is probably shorter. Anyway, she was being held in a maximum security prison in China up until about a year ago. About ten months went by before she popped up again. She hasn't stolen anything, kidnapped anyone, or set any major buildings on fire. It's like she's going around with the soul purpose of making as much chaos as possible, but she never stays in one place long enough for us to catch her. Last week we found her letting animals out of a zoo in Colorado." He shivered. "So many monkeys. Anyway, we got so close, but she just vanishes without a trace every time without a single clue as to where she's going. This time, though, we got a heads up from an anonymous tip on our website that she'd be coming to New York City."

Jake nodded that he was following. "So where do I come in?"

"Kim wouldn't tell me," Ron said, but Rufus started making a string of squeaking noises and shaking a tiny paw at him from his pocket. "Alright, I didn't really ask."

Fu Dog grabbed Jake by the collar and pulled him down to Fu's level. "You don't have time for this kid," he whispered. "You're going to be on this ice with Gramps already with the convention this weekend."

"But it's a dangerous criminal loose in my city," Jake whispered back. "Shouldn't I do something?"

"It's New York City. There are dangerous criminals running around everyday. It sounds like a non-magical problem. Besides, we don't even know these people, or how much they know about the magical world."

Jake was inclined to agree, but something about the picture was nagging at him. The black hair, the green skin...just like the woman he thought he saw in the park. This Shego seemed to have a thing for the color green, if her outfit in the photo was anything to go by; if she was the one making those green flashes he saw scaring the unicorns, she might just be relevant after all. That would make these Kim and Ron characters the closest lead to tracking down someone who might be trying to interfere with the pixie convention, if Haley's theory about the stampede was anything to go by.

"_Ron!_" The call from Ron's watch was apparently still going on. "_Are you on your way yet?_" _  
_

"On it, KP!" Ron answered. To Jake an Fu, he said, "Look, I can come back later-"

"No," Jake told him, standing up straight. "I'll come, too."

"Seriously?" Ron and Fu asked in unison.

"Yeah, man," Jake gave himself a pat on the chest. "If you want to get there fast, you're going to want a native. I know all the shortcuts."

"It'll be dangerous," Ron warned.

Jake scoffed. "I _breath_ danger, yo. Let's catch us a fugitive."

Ron seemed to have an inner war with himself, but in the end he shrugged. "Alright, let's go."

Jake followed Ron outside and scanned the vehicles on the curb, wondering which car was his. He was shocked when Ron swung himself over a red and black motorcycle parked on the curb.

"Dude," Jake smiled, "that's yours?"

"Yup-well, okay, no," he admitted, pulling a helmet on. "I'm borrowing it from a friend." He tossed Jake an extra helmet. "Hop on."

"Sweet!"

Jake shoved the helmet on his head and hopped on behind Ron. He barely heard Fu Dog shouting over the engine, "Kid! What am I supposed to tell-" Fu coughed and waved the fog left behind by the engine as the cycle sped down the street. "...the old man. Aw biscuits."

* * *

**DONE. Gah, that was harder than it should have been. I re-wrote that conversation three times before I was okay with it. The next chapter should be a lot less talking and a lot more action. ****Anyway, thanks for the patience and support, I had a stressful few days last week. I should get the next chapter out a lot faster.**

**Also, I feel like I should make it clear that this isn't going to be much of a romance. There will be things with Kim and Ron (because they're adorable) and some Jake and Rose things thrown around (because they're more or less cannon. I guess, the ending sort of confused me) but other than that, I don't have any sort of ships planned for the near future. To answer Blackjackthefreakpire specifically, there will be no Jake/Ron romance. They just happen to be in this chapter together. **

**-One**


	4. Chapter 1-4

The trip to fifth avenue was, in a word, thrilling. Whether it was a good thrilling or a bad thrilling was still up for debate. New York traffic was bad enough to get through on a normal day, but for whatever reason the streets were at maximum capacity today, and Ron seemed to have little to no sense of traffic laws, because it hardly phased him.

"Dude," Jake called over Ron's shoulder, "where'd you learn how to drive?"

"Japan!" he called back. "And various learn on the go, life or death situations. All part of the Stoppable driving experience!" The bike swerved dangerously close around a noisy herd of taxis as they came up to the next intersection. "Where am I going?" Ron asked, not for the first time.

"Make a left," Jake told him and then held on for fear life as the turn nearly flung him off the back end of the bike.

"How do we know where we're going, anyway?" Ron asked, shouting over honking horns. "Fifth avenue is a whole street, right?"

"It's a bad guy-woman on fifth avenue," Jake reasoned. "Where else but a jewelry store?" Moving in the opposite direction of the fleeing fairy-shoppers was also a good tip-off, but he kept quiet on that part.

Either that was good enough for Ron, or the traffic was too distracting, because the last few blocks went by with little extra than Rufus flying into Jake's face and squealing in what Jake could only assume was excitement. When fifth finally came into view, Ron screeched the bike to a stop down the road from a police blockade. Police men were waving civilians away and ushering panicked-looking shoppers onto other streets.

"They must be close," Ron said, "but how can we get the cops to let us pass?"

Jake pulled the helmet off his head and scanned the shops up and down the street. When he found what he wanted he handed the helmet back to Ron and told him, "Park it and follow me."

Hopping off and running ahead before he got to witness the Stoppable Parking Experience, Jake pulled open the door to a small café wedged between two larger buildings. Behind the counter, an exceptionally hairy guy with a name tag that read "Tim" was sorting a basket of apples. Tim looked up when Jake entered.

"Hey, kid," he greeted. "Need an after school pick-me-up? We got brand new shot glasses for the bar downstairs," he said with a wink.

Jake's shoulders dropped in dismay. "Am I the only one who didn't know I was allowed to drink?"

Tim put a hand to his mouth. "Oops," he said. "Don't tell Lao Shi I said that, would 'ja? It's, uhm...at the dragon masters digression anyway." He cleared his that uncomfortably. "So I heard," he added.

Jake under no circumstances bought that, but before he could comment, Ron burst through the door behind him. "Ooh, cute place," he mused. "What are we doing here?"

"Right," Jake shook his head. He pointed a finger toward the ceiling "Mind if we use your window?"

"Any time for a good dragon," Tim answered. "I owe you enough favors."

"Thanks man. Follow me," he called to Ron over his shoulder and he made for the staircase that led up the side of the room. Jake tried not to laugh as Ron practically fell over one of the tables crammed into the available space.

"'Dragon', huh?" Ron asked, following up the stairs into Tom's apartment. "That some sort of street gang or something?"

_He doesn't know about dragons_, _then_, Jake mentally noted before answering. "More like an extended family name."

"A _mafia family_ name?"

Jake wasn't sure how to respond to that.

Tim's apartment was technically part of the building next door, but the landlord officially owned both buildings and had agreed to make the connecting staircase. The room was relatively small and definitely cluttered, but the one small window had a prime view of the usually busy street below that also happens to be fifth avenue.

Jake waded through the layer of miscellaneous stuff crowding the ground to the window. Ron was providing an endless stream of commentary from behind him.

"Wow," he was saying. "I know the place is small, but what is he, a pack rat?" Rufus made a noise of protest. "Sorry, buddy. You're the cleanest rat I know."

"Half troll, actually," Jake said absently. He didn't notice, or care, really, if Ron heard him while he hauled open the old window and stuck his head out. The road below was eerily empty, but the sound of sirens was quickly getting louder.

Ron stuck his head out next to him. "You sure this is the right street?"

Just as he said that, a ringing alarm started inside a store a few buildings down. Not long after that there was a spectacular shattering of glass and two figures rolled into the street. They staggered to their feet for a brief moment before one of them lit their hands green and leaped towards the other.

They both had long heads of hair that both seemed vaguely familiar. The one fighting the green hands had bright red hair.

"Is that them?"

"Yeah, hey," he leaned further out, waved an arm and shouted, "Hey KP!"

The red head bounced and flipped far enough away from her opponent - and closer to them - for her to look up. One look at her face told Jake what he already knew: Kim Possible was Kim from the Park. She obviously hand't known who he was, though, because her eyes widened when Ron pointed at Jake and yelled, "I found him!"

She opened her mouth to say something, but the other woman - Jake could now clearly see green skin - caught up and she fell back onto the defensive side of the fight.

"Is that Shego?" Jake asked.

Rufus crawled onto Jake's shoulder and nodded vigorously while squeaking. It sounded something like, "_Yup, yup. Bad person_." He wiggled his fingers and flung his little fists around.

Ron reached his arm back inside the window and pulled something blue and sleek, as if it had hardly been used, off of his belt.

"Is that a hairdryer?" Jake asked.

Ron clicked the trigger and three metal claws popped out the end. "Better," Ron told him.

Squinting one eye, Ron aimed the thing out the window and fired. The hooks shot out the end, followed by a cord that extended all the way across the street. The grappling hook on the end made its way right into Shego's quick hand. Shego took the moment to snarl down the cord at Ron, but it left her open to Kim, who leaped forward and spun her around violently enough that she flailed out in panic and, before she could process it, Shego was tangled in grapple cord.

"A-boo-yah!" Ron fist pumped, still holding the gun with one hand. "Did you see that? KP's not the only one with mad grapple skill-uh oh."

On the ground, Shego seemed to light into some sort of green fire that completely covered her body, but she wasn't burning. Her black hair started kicking in the draft and the grapple cable sparked. The flames had traveled up the cable and singed Ron's gloves before he could react to drop he hair dryer/gun and let it fall two stories to land hard on the concrete.

"Aw, c'mon," Ron moaned. "I just go that one!"

"I wasn't ganna ask," Jake wondered out loud, "but what's with the green fire?"

"Long story short, some crazy space meteor gave her super powers," Ron summarized, shaking his smoking hands.

Jake nodded, having followed stranger concepts before. "Is there anything beyond the glowing?"

"Not including the inhuman ninja-skills and ability to take a punch, not really." Back down on the street, Kim and Shego had started up again. Ron scooped Rufus off on Jake's shoulder and put him back into his pocket. "Is there a way down onto the street? A fire escape or something?" he asked.

"No fire escape," Jake told him. But instead of finding a way down the stairs, he swung a leg out the window.

Ron startled. "What are you doing?"

"What, you afraid of heights?" Jake teased, ducking his head under the top of the window and swinging his other leg over to sit on the ledge. A deep breath and some careful aim later, he jumped. It only took one hand and some quick reflexes to grab the street light and swing himself in a full three-sixty to land on the ground like he had after landing plenty of flights before. Of course, he may have been using some gravity-defying dragon powers on that jump across the side walk, so he had no idea if Ron would hurt himself trying to do the same. But, to Jake's surprise, a moment later the pole shook next to him and Ron came sliding down, clinging with both arms and legs.

Jake openly laughed at the funny sight. "Are you always this goofy?" he asked.

"Psh," Ron flipped his meager bangs. "I haven't even lost my pants yet," he said with the utmost self-confidence.

Across the street, another display window shattered with a misplaced shot on Shego's part. The store alarm began to blare on top of the alarm already going off and the sirens of the police cars that were blocking the intersections up and down fifth avenue. Parts of shattered glass were glowing with green heat and some were even melting onto the concrete. Kim had fallen back to only using defensive maneuvers, and Shego was still picking up speed. In a few moments Kim landed hard on her butt.

While Ron detached himself from the street light, Jake moved forward. Shego's arm was pulled back in preparation for a blast Kim wouldn't be able to dodge, but Jake grabbed her wrist. He saw a brief look of surprise on her face before he twisted her arm, slid his feet, and used both hands shift her wait up and over, flipping her several yards onto the sidewalk in a matter of blinks.

_I knew martial arts training would be the best thing to ever happen to me,_ Jake thought and smirked to himself. _I bet that looked freakin' legit._

While Shego lay stunned, Jake held out a hand to Kim. "You alright?"

She took his hand and he pulled her to her feet. "Yeah," she said. "Thanks."

Ron quickly approached, slightly shouldering Jake out of the way to get to his girlfriend. He held her by the shoulders, looked her over, and asked, "Are you okay?"

She smiled fondly back at him, a small smile playing on her face. "I'm fine, Ron." She put one of her hands on his and moved them off her shoulders. He didn't say anything else but he gave her a smile back.

Jake was pretty sure this was the most adorable couple's he'd ever seen before in his life. And he'd attended an actual cat wedding. Fu was a friend of the bride's.

While the three of them were standing there, Shego had stumbled to her feet. The way they were standing, she was cornered against a wall of stores. Nowhere to run. "Who's the squirt?" she asked, reclaiming their attention. She ran gloved hand over her hair in an attempt to getting some of the shine back that the sidewalk had taken.

Jake fisted his hands to hide his claws appearing in anger. "I'm not that short!"

Shego nodded sarcastically, stretching her black lipstick into a cocky smile. "Uh-huh. You keep believing that, little guy. Look, it's been fun, but I really ought to go, all these alarms are _murder_ on my ear drums."

She turned casually as if to leave, even if the only thing behind her was solid brick, and Kim leaped into action, shouting, "Stop!" But when she got within arms reach, her hands hit empty space and she stumbled. Jake stared, startled. Where Shego had been standing was now empty space.

She was gone.

There was a heavy silence between them for a few moments while Kim gained her footing and heaved an irritated sigh. She turned and they all exchanged varying looks before Jake brought up the nerve to ask, "Kim Possible?"

"Kim Possible," she confirmed. "Jake Long?"

"Jake Long," he repeated. The sound of footsteps from down the street caught his attention. He turned his head to see several NYPD officers cautiously stepping towards them. "But don't tell them that."

"What, you got a problem with cops?" Kim asked, raising an eyebrow.

Jake shrugged. "More like the press that follows." He turned to Ron. "You still have our address?"

"Uh..." Ron dug through his pockets and winced when he came up empty.

"Don't worry," Kim told him. "I'm sure Rufus remembers where it is."

Sure enough, Rufus poked out of Ron's pocket and gave a salute.

Kim gave Jake a reassuring smile. "We'll talk to you later."

"You _do_ need my help then? Because I'm still very much confused about this whole thing and-"

"Are you going or not?" she pushed.

"Right, right, I'm going!" Finding the nearest man hole cover, Jake tapped into a bit of his dragon strength and pushed it up and over just enough for him to squeeze through and drop down into the sewers - a place was was way too familiar with. Now that he was out of sight, he used his tail and feet to hold onto the ladder so he could slide the cover back with his hands before dropping into a relatively shallow patch of sewer.

Jake pulled out his phone before fully transforming to fly down the tunnel. When he unlocked it, he was greeted with at least a dozen text messages and a voice mail. He didn't even need to look at the sender; all the texts were typed in angry looking Chinese.

"Aw, man," he sighed, and put on an extra burst of speed. Gramps was going to kill him.

* * *

**I would just like to say that I am a rainbow of sorry that this took so long but I'm also happy to say that I spend 80% of that 10 day vacation in NYC and am now hecks of inspired. I got all sorts of ideas that are going to help this whole thing go so much smoother from all directions and I can't wait to keep working on this. I will honestly be surprised with myself if the next chapter isn't up by the end of the week, and if it's not, know that a reliable source will be giving me a wedgie for it so you don't have to. But I will have brought it upon myself, so s'all good. Mostly.**

**I know there hasn't been a whole lot of action for these, guys, but fear not, it will come in due time. Probably in violent bursts of inspiration that involve thought processes such as "Why are they not in a fist fight yet?" and "D'em's fightin' woards."**

**Anyway, thanks for all the continuing support, you guys melt my little heart. :3**

**-One**


	5. Chapter 1-5

After years of taking hard scoldings from his grandfather, Jake had piled together every possible way to either avoid one, or at least lighten the load a little. This was one circumstance where'd he'd have to settle for a lighter load. He hadn't even crawled out of the sewer before he started planning his "please at least yell at me in English" speech.

He was actually on the verge of getting his hopes up about the situation – after all, if Shego was the woman from the park and Haley's assumptions about the connection between the unicorns and the pixies were true, then it _could_ be considered magical business. But that only mattered if he managed to get a word in before _it_ started. Maybe if both Fu Dog and Haley had been debriefed by Gramps by the time he walked in, then Gramps could have spotted the possible connection on his own and Jake Long would have a lucky break that didn't involve leprechauns.

His hopes dropped back down again.

When he approached the back door to the shop, he placed his hand on the handle and took a deep breath. If he got it all out in one huge, run-on sentence, maybe, just _maybe_ Gramps wouldn't have time to interrupt him before hearing him out.

His hopes dropped lower.

He took a second deep breath, just in case, and went for it anyway.

As soon as he opened the door, he spilled out, "Okay Grandpa I know you're mad, but listen it was really important there's this guy who came to the shop asking for help and said that their's a globally wanted criminal in the city and I can't just ignore that and I think she may have been the cause of the stampede in the park earlier or possibly even some sort of magical creature herself so there was a totally legit magical reason for going, see? No real need to punish me, right? I blew you off a bit but I was just doing my duty and all that so s'all good!"

As Jake took deep breaths at the end of his speech, he looked around a room that was empty of all life that wasn't his sister, sitting exactly where he left her but having replaced the book with bubble gum. She popped a bubble and gave an overly dramatized slow clap. "That was _beautiful,_ Jake. They ought to give you the Cicero Award for that speech now and save us all the time."

Jake slapped his faced and sighed a little more hysterically than he would have liked. "He's in the front, isn't he?"

"Yup."

Jake dragged the hand down off his face and looked to his sister. "Did that at least sound a little convincing?"

"For me? Mmm, maybe. For Grandpa?" She shook her head pityingly. "Good luck, bro."

"Thanks." Gulping down the lump in his throat, Jake pushed back the curtain and started before he'd even taken a step into the front room, "Okay Grandpa I know you're mad, but listen-"

The entire rest of Jake's speech was cut off by four full minutes of angry Chinese – Fu won twelve biscuits on a bet.

He was apparently angry enough that he didn't even flip immediately into English. It was more like a gradual progression so he didn't really understand anything until Gramps got to, "...and Fu Dog tells me that you've gone off with some stranger that may or may not know about your identity or the magical world at all when you are _supposed_ to be preparing for the day's training! I had thought you had become more responsible than this!"

"But Gramps, you've gotta listen!" Jake pleaded. "They're coming back to talk, maybe if you listen to them–"

"No!" Lao Shi cut him off. "No more excuses! Not today." He took a deep, calming, breath, and when he spoke again it was more controlled, but the anger still boiled underneath. "We will not be doing the practical lesson today. I want you finished with that book by tomorrow afternoon's lesson."

"But Grandpa–"

"No buts!" Gramps moved around him to walk into the back room. "I am sending Haley home for the day. She has done more than enough already. You will stay here until your new 'friends' come and you will inform them they we cannot help and send them away." He walked into the back room without another word.

Fu let out a low whistle from where he was sitting on the stool behind the counter. "Wow, kid. He hasn't gone off on you like that for what, a year now? You really blew it today, huh?"

Jake let out a tired sigh and sat down hard on an unopened box. He ran both hands through his hair and squeezed his eyes shut. "Yeah," he agreed. "Because the world just loves Jake Long today."

"Oh, don't be so hard on yourself, kid. You were practically due for one of these."

"There is no way I'm going to be able to get through that book by tomorrow. I'll have to stay up all night just trying; and probably ignore every class I have tomorrow."

"But see this? This is progress. A few years ago you'd come screaming to me for a magical cheat sheet that would inevitably fail and cause a huge mess that'd you have to clean up. Then you would never actually get to doing what you were supposed to do in the first place and end up disappointing the old man anyway. Now we're just skipping a few steps." Jake looked up and gave Fu an unappreciative look. "What?" Fu asked, cracking into a dog biscuit. "A dog can't be funny anymore?"

"Not at my expense, no."

Fu Dog grumbled something but Jake didn't bother to catch what it was. Just the looming thought of the book on that desk was sending his mood into a downward spiral. Just when he thought he was going to be getting some action around here, he gets dragon-grounded by Gramps again. He'd been on such a good-streak, too.

Jake was still mulling around in his thoughts when the shop door creaked open. Rufus actually made it through the door first, followed closely by Ron and Kim walked in behind him. Ron chased Rufus to a shelf of moderately new flat screens, but Kim walked right for Jake when she saw him. Jake stood, trying not to feel a little awkward at the thought of turning these guys away. They seemed pretty cool, and it wasn't every day that people came in and almost specifically asked him if he wanted to get into some serious bad-guy fighting/chasing action. It had a habit of happening anyway, but this was supposed to jump right to the action – his favorite part, if he was being honest – and he was about to send them out the door.

Maybe he just wasn't a Thursday guy. Sure. He'd go with that.

"Hi," Kim greeted. She was much more friendly when she wasn't climbing on horses or engaged in kung-fu fights with glowing women. "Sorry the first two times we've met have been so hasty."

"Naw, s'no problem. I'm used to speedy meet and greats." Which was true. He'd met more magical creatures on the fly than he can remember the names of. How much other truthful things he would be able to say to Kim, he was still trying to gauge. He couldn't exactly just come out and say "Do you know I'm a dragon?" for a number of purposes that don't really warrant mentioning. Before he could start flipping through possible ways to go about the question, though, he was forced to remind himself that Gramps was in the other room and if Kim and Ron stayed too long he'd get suspicious.

"Listen, I'd love to help you guys out, but I'm kind of in deep trouble with my Grandpa right now, so I can't do anything for you. Sorry."

Kim nodded understandingly, but she surprised Jake by asking, rather understandingly, "You can't help us, or your grandfather doesn't want you to help us?"

Jake was flustered for a moment. "It's not that I don't want to help! But-"

Kim held up a hand and an apologetic smile. "No, I understand. I'm not trying to get you to go all rebel on your grandfather or anything," her eyes suddenly gained a determined look to them, "but if I had a dollar for every time someone told me I couldn't help people, I wouldn't need to pay for college."

"I wouldn't need to _go _to college," Ron commented, mostly to himself.

"Just in case, though," Kim took a pen off the counter and wrote out a number on the spare note-pad. She ripped off the top sheet and handed it to Jake. "Here's my number. If for some reason you need Ron, it's the same but with 2 instead of a 1."

"Even numbers, KP," Ron insisted. "Under appreciated."

"We're staying in a hotel downtown for a while until we figure out what Shego was doing here and if she's left yet," she continued, sending a smile to Ron as she spoke. "If your grandfather changes his mind, I'm sure you'd be a big help."

"I'm sure I would, too," Jake muttered angrily under his breath. Why did he have to be so stupid sometimes? If he had only told Gramps what he was doing from the get-go. Maybe called his cellphone from Ron's bike...

"It was nice to meet you, anyway," Kim said, snapping Jake out of his thoughts. "Thanks for saving my butt on the street back there."

Jake shrugged, smiling a little, and pounded the fist she held up. "Just another day in the City, I guess."

"I hope your grandfather comes around," she called as the door shut behind her. Jake caught a glimpse of Ron slinging his arm over her shoulders before they walked out of view of the windows and were gone.

Jake had barely started thinking before two paws had grabbed either side of his face and pulled him down to Fu-level. "Oh, no you don't, kid."

"What? I didn't do anything!" Jake tried through smooshed cheeks.

"No, but you were about to," Fu insisted. "I know the signs, bub. That was your pre-Thinking Face; and if we let you reach full on Thinking Face then next thing you know we're flying around the in the middle of the night doing things we're not supposed to because _I_ let you _think_. And when you think, you work against the Old Man, because, face it, that's kind of what you do best. But every time this happens, _I_ loose sleep, _you_ get more grounded than you already were, and _the Old Man_ loses another hair. And, if we're both honest with ourselves, he can't afford many more of those." Fu pinched Jake's cheeks and stretched them. "So how about we both do ourselves a favor: You don't think, I sleep, and we try that foreign new concept we've been attempting to start for years where we listen to the Old Man and see what happens. What do we know anyway? Maybe it's not as bad as we think."

Fu let Jake's cheeks snap back to his face with a slap. Jake rubbed his face moodily. "Fine," he agreed. "We'll give it a shot."

Fu Dog gave a stiff nod before grabbing a newspaper off of a box as he passed Jake and walked into the back room, muttering something to himself again. After he was out of sight, Jake felt his face move as his thoughts moved back to everything Kim had said. Thinking faces aside, Jake had developed a sort of sense for unfinished business; almost like an alarm system. This alarm had a rap sheet and glowing green hands. Well, if bells could have hands, anyway. Jake was pretty sure they could, actually. He's seen stranger.

As he moved to join the others in the back, Jake was heavily aware of the page with Kim's number as he slipped it into his pocket. He had a nasty feeling the giant book on pixies wasn't going to be getting much attention tomorrow.

* * *

**Okay so writing Kim and Jake talking to each other civilly as mere acquaintances if freaking hard and I figure it can't be much easier to read but they'll get there, I promise. They both just spit of spew's of trying to suppress their "I do what I want" sides with their "Be a good person and do what's right" sides. But hey, those are the characters that make wicked sweet super villain AU characters. **

**Oh no don't let me go there my plot map for this thing is complicated enough.**

**Also, so according to google there are these things called Cicero Speechwriting Awards. It seemed like Haley would be the kind of person to know obscure things like that. Or to have at least done the most basic googling so she could throw out names that average people wouldn't understand anyway to make herself look smarter and only works when the other person knows less about it than google has told you. That's what happens when you give pre-teens the internet.**

**-One**


	6. Chapter 1-6

"Jake," Haley asked, stepping almost in time with her brother as they walked to school Friday morning, "why is your bag showing in insufficient amount of girth for the book you're supposed to be carrying?"

Jake had decided years ago - when he was eight, to be precise - that one day, a little sister wasn't going to be worth the trouble and that he would find some sort of way to get everyone to believe there had been some sort of mix up at the hospital, just to get the little sister aspect out of his life and maybe get a little brother in the process. This was quickly becoming one of those days where he liked to think back to such a blissful time when such dreams were possible. Now that they had both grown second skins that featured flame-retardant scales, the genetics were undeniable and Jake had no hope left in that department.

"Because it's not there," he said honestly. No point in fighting the torrent of shaming that was Haley Long.

"But Grandpa wants you to have it finished by training this afternoon," she reminded him. "Did you finish it last night?"

"Do you really have to ask?"

"No, but sometimes I feel like even you still deserve the benefit of the doubt, but then I remember that it's you and I once again realize that I have no hope left in that department."

Jake tried really hard sometimes to keep himself from really believing that Haley could read his mind.

She wasted no time jumping straight into guilt tactics. "Jake you've been prepping for this convention for months, are you just going to throw all that work away?"

"The only reason Gramps has been making me work so hard is because he doesn't want a repeat of last year. Which isn't going to happen anyway, because _you're_ going to be there."

Haley stopped in her tracks. "Oh no," she said angrily, needing no further explanation. "You are _not_ pushing this whole thing onto me."

"Come on, Haley, you love pixies."

"Sure, I do," she admitted, "but it's still your job, not mine!"

"My job is to protect the magical community, America specifically," Jake reasoned. "And your job is to help me do my job. So by going after potential violent threats to the general population of NYC, I'm also doing my job. By covering for me at the pixie convention, you'll be helping me and therefore doing _your_ job. See? We're all doing our jobs and helping out." Jake tried his best to look as convincing as he thought he sounded. "All in a day's work."

Haley looked less than convinced.

"Grandpa is going to be _so_ mad when you tell him."

Jake turned and started walking again. "I'm not planning on telling him."

Jake listened to Haley jog to catch up. "But you're supposed to go to the shop after school today!"

"Yes, I am supposed to."

"You're so _stupid!_" She shouted at him. "Have you not learned _anything_? We've gone down thus road a hundred times and it never ends well. Here I thought you'd finally activated whatever brain you have in that skull, and it turns out you just ran out of exciting enough excuses to do what you've always done."

Jake looked at his sister, perplexed. "I didn't know you cared so much, Haley."

She huffed. "Only because a week from now, when this whole thing goes south and you land in a world of trouble, you will turn into a never ending fountain of complaints that skin the nerves of everyone nearby."

"This totally means you're going to help me, doesn't it?"

Haley practically growled as she exhaled and took a moment to move a strand of hair out of her face. "Only because I know I can't change your mind."

Jake rubbed a hand over the top of her head, misplacing her hair. "I knew there was a reason Mom and Dad had a second child."

"Okay, look," Haley swatted his hand away. "I'll do some digging on Kim Possible during my free period before lunch, and during lunch I'll fill you in. Be in the courtyard."

Jake slung an arm around his sister's shoulders. "I knew you'd come through, Hales."

Haley shrugged him off. "I'm not doing this for you," she explained. "I'm doing it for my own sanity."

Jake messed with her hair again. "Good enough for me."

"Stop it with the hair," she complained as they rounded the last corner to school. "I have an image to keep, and this is public school."

One of the most shocking decisions his little sister had ever made in their lifetimes was to spend a year, not in a private school for exceptional and privileged children, but at Millard Fillmore. Her existing level of genius had already skipped her up a grade to start sixth grade, putting her in the same school as Jake. None of them were even sure what had brought the decision on, but, just like that, she had gone up their mom and asked for it of her own volition. It was a shocking time for the Long family, but Haley had assured them that it was merely a social experiment and she would no doubt eventually take up their mother's offer to put her back into her old schools at any time.

Somehow this had not yet happened. Actually, if Jake were asked, he would say that Haley actually seems pretty happy at Millard Fillmore. She had already made friends and was showing up the ever-present Principal Rotwood on a regular basis. Jake actually felt proud of her sometimes. But, walking up the front steps of the school an agreed five feet behind her, he knew that he could only admit to it if he was prepared for a string of denials and an instance from Haley that public schools were nasty and over populated, and he couldn't honestly argue with that.

* * *

"_Kim Possible_? You met _Kim Possible_ and didn't call me immediately?"

"Spud, calm down!" Jake pulled at Spud's hands on either side of his face. "I didn't know it was important."

"Didn't know that it was-" Spud sucked in a huge, wheezing, breath of air before promptly falling out of his seat and onto the classroom floor.

Jake turned to Trixie. "What's up with him?"

"Jakey, I could spend the rest of my life with that boy and not know what's happenin'." She pulled her feet down off the table and leaned forward to look at Spud on Jake's other side. "But you might want to get that boy off the floor before he catches somthin'. Last sucker to touch that floor with his face got mono."

It was true that, for a chemistry class, the floor was exceptionally sticky. But then pretty much all the floors were pretty unsanitary - it came with being a floor. It wasn't like it was anything new to them, though. Millard Fillmore had been their little prison of education for years already, and moving into the high school division didn't make anything a whole lot better.

"Spud!" Jake hauled Spud back into his chair by his shirt. "Spud. Explanation please."

Spud blinked back into the real world and snapped his pointer finger into Jake's face. "Kim Possible is a true heroine! An example to us all!"

Jake rolled his eyes. "Well I already knew that much. Haley's going to do some digging during her free period and fill me in at lunch."

"Please," Spud placed a hand on Jake's shoulder. "What could your lil sis possible find that I don't already know? I, a long time follower of the exploits and heroic tactics of Kim Possible."

"Well her usual contacts include the P.E. student teacher who hides his wings under his windbreaker, and a girl in her Advanced Latin class who also happens to be a witch in training."

Trixie slapped her hands on the table. "I knew there was something up with that guy! I don't care how much effort you put into your flexibility, man was not made to bend that way."

Suddenly their chemistry teacher interrupted with a heavy clearing of her throat. "Mr. Long, Mr. Spudinski, Ms. Carter," she said sternly, looking down at them over the rim of her glasses. "I'm so glad to see you are all capable of such avid conversation about your worksheet on electronegativity."

"Absolutely Mrs. Bakel," Jake insisted, supported by the enthusiastic nods of his friends. Mrs. Bakel gave an unconvinced hum, but moved on to the next table.

Spud wasted no time in getting his laptop out of his bag and onto the table. He almost immediately had a web page up that, at a glance, was a Kim Possible fan site. "Kim Possible started her campaign of heroism in her early teens," he summarized. "Goes by the slogan "She can do anything" and has actively lived up to it since. She's been pretty quiet for the last two years, probably because she's been spending the better part of her time studying abroad in China. Though they study in different countries, she has been exclusively dating one Ron Stoppable. Not much is known about him, but it's rumored that he accompanies her on missions around the world."

"That is..." Jake skimmed over a bit of the web article, "a little creepy, actually."

"So Gramps told you you can't help them out?" Trixie asked.

Jake sighed and slumped back in his chair. "Let's talk about something else," he suggested. "How was that skate park yesterday?"

Spud shrugged, still surfing the website. "It was alright. Not like we can really afford to be picky anymore though, with all the good parks betting bought up for new office buildings and such."

"The new half-pipe is smooth as a behind of the baby kind, baby," Trixie hummed happily. "Felt almost like flyin' with that magic whatevers Fu gave us - that one time? Man, flying is _awesome._ You need to appreciate 'dem wings more, Jakie."

"I can fly you up a few skyscrapers after school, if you want. I think I'm finally big enough to fit both of you on my back."

Spud held out a hand. "No thanks, bro. I'm still feeling nauseous from the last go."

Trixie squinted at Jake accusingly. "Don't you have training again at the shop today? You sounded really busy yesterday."

"Yeah, well," Jake tried to chase away the bitter thoughts that had started edging their way into his mind that morning, "my schedule cleared up."

Trixie and Spud shared concerned looks. "You're not goin' against the Old Man again, are you Jakie?"

Jake held out his hands, exasperated. "Why do you all say it like it's committing treason?"

"You were on such a good streak this past year," Trixie complained, giving him a sorrowful look. "Why drop it now?"

Jake crossed his arms and looked determinedly in the opposite direction. "I'm going to have to do this job on my own eventually, and I've already been doing it for years-"

"He's just trying to help you," she interrupted, "he doesn't want to see you get hurt - _we_ don't want to see you get hurt!"

"I'm not going to get hurt."

"You said it yourself, you're trying to track down a person who had been doing time in _China_. Now I'm not big on world politics, but I'm pretty sure if they're wanted over there _and _over here they had to have done some pretty serious stuff."

"It's true," Spud interjected. "While she never works on her own, Shego is known on the majority of fan sites to be Kim Possible's truest foe." Spud turned his laptop to show off an entire page of the website labeled 'Shego' and held up a fist for dramatic emphasis.

"I'll be _fine_." Jake risked making eye contact again. "If a human can handle her, why can't a dragon?"

"That's probably what has Gramps worrying," Trixie persisted. "If this Kim Possible has been handling green and nasty on her own for all these years, why come to get magical help now?"

"We don't even know if the help she wants is magical or not," Spud commented, fairly. "For all we know, she was just hoping to make use on a suggested local contact. According to her unclassified mission logs, she hasn't been here that many times."

Trixie switched targets. "Spudinski, who's side are you on?"

Spud shrugged. "I'm just being the neutral party."

Trixie shook her head and looked back to Jake. She said, more calmly, "Even so, maybe Gramps has the right idea on this one. Maybe you should just stay out of it."

"Gramps isn't always right," Jake argued harshly. He had a bitter taste on his tongue as he said what he was thinking. "Just because they're adults, doesn't mean they know everything. They're not gods; they can be wrong sometimes, too." Jake sat up, put both hands on the desk, and looked both of them in the eye. "I'm going to help Kim Possible. I'm going to find out how much she knows, maybe tell her anyway," he added more out of spite than of seriousness, "and I'm going to do everything in my power to help. Look, I'm gonna call her right now."

Jake took his phone from where it was already sitting on the table and swiftly tapped to where he'd added Kim to his contact list. It rung twice before the other line picked up and he heard a, "Hello?"

"Hey, Kim!" He answered, smile on his face as he sunk lower in his chair again to hide from Mrs. Bakel. "It's Jake Long, are you busy?"

* * *

During lunch, Jake found Haley exactly where he expected to: leaning against the building wall in an inconspicuous corner of the yard where she could be certain no one would see her with her "gangster wanna-be of a brother." It wasn't like the kids at school weren't fully aware they were related, but everyone held onto their own little delusions in life. She was picking apart the string cheese she had brought from home, rather distractedly, when Jake approached.

"Hey, Hales," he greeted. She gave a little hum of acknowledgement, but nothing else.

"So what'd you find out?" he asked. She didn't really seem in the mood for conversation - probably some boring girl drama or something - so he tried to get them right to the point: Kim Possible; who seemed to be all Jake was capable of talking about today. It was a little irritating when talking to Trixie and Spud, but after he'd actually called her and set up a time to meet with her and Ron after school, he was all focused on the topic again. "Are they shape-shifters or something?"

"What?" She looked up at him frustrated, but Jake couldn't help notice she knew exactly what he was talking about. "No, they're totally human."

"Well, what's the dirt then?" He dropped his bag on the ground next to hers and picked the section of wall that looked least uncomfortable to lean on beside her. "Spud told me she's some kind of self-employed super-girl, but then he gets pretty much all his dirt from the internet. Who'd _you_ talk to?"

"I called Rose." She picked off another string of cheese.

Jake blinked, caught off guard. "You what?"

"I called Rose," she repeated.

The last time Jake had seen Rose was years ago. There had been the occasional e-mail or phone conversation, but only when necessary. When the Dragon Council had discovered Rose's regained hunter abilities, they'd decided she could be put to use. She continued to live with her parents in China, but occasionally acted as a kind of ambassador for the human race to the magical world. They both knew it was the Dragon Council's way of keeping an eye on her, but she had been able to do some good and she and Jake had initially taken to using it as an excuse to talk across continents. Now, though, it had dissolved into strictly business talk. The epic break-up between Rose and Jake didn't even have the awkward avoidance phase, since it was pretty hard _not_ to avoid someone living in another hemisphere.

There had, however, been a phase full of ice cream and sorry excuses for blues music.

"I couldn't help thinking that the name Kim Possible was familiar for some reason," Haley continued. "Something to do with that huge magical prison break about a year ago. You know, the one you missed?"

Jake was well aware. About a year ago, Haley had gone with Gramps, Sun Park, and Fu Dog on a magically-funded trip to visit the Dragon Council in China. It wasn't anything important - just a political-type meeting about being a young dragon ready to _officially_ start training to be the back-up American Dragon. (Or what Jake liked to call the American Side Kick.) Under normal circumstances, it would have been an easy trip down the elevator to the Isle of Draco, but with the official chambers under construction due to some sort of "classified incident", they'd moved it to their temporary headquarters in China. While they were overseas, a prison break went down in a facility that held some of the most dangerous magical criminals still in existence. Most had been quickly and easily rounded up, but there were still some names looming over the Dragon Council's heads of escaped convicts.

Haley, Gramps, Sun Park, and Rose had all played big parts in the round up, but Jake had been just as busy on the home front at the time, and didn't hear a lot of the other details. He would admit, however, that he hadn't asked for them, frustrated that he'd missed out on the action

"So what'd you find out?"

"Well for one, Spud was right - Kim Possible is quite the world hero. Even in the magical community, she has quite a list of accomplishments. During the prison break a year ago, she happened to be in the area and she ended up helping Rose catch some of the convicts. It's the middle of the night over there so she wasn't exactly awake enough to give me the heavy details when I called, but one of the baddies she helped bring in was Former Councilor Chang."

Jake connected some dots in his head. "That makes sense. Spud said she was going to school in China. And if she helped fight Chang she must have found out about dragons, right?"

"Rose did say she's never told anyone else about Kim's involvement - we weren't supposed to get civilians involved. Kim had nothing but good intentions, so Rose said having the Dragon Council take her memory away would be a waste of a good asset. Though it is probably safe to say her partner Ron doesn't know anything."

"Why wouldn't she tell him?" Jake pondered, thinking of how they walked together, how concerned Ron would get over her, and the way she looked at him. He leaned his head back against the wall while Haley finished her cheese and pulled out a juice box. "They seem really close."

"If you want your romance, get it from the source. Teen gossip is _not_ in the side kick rule book." Haley swung her bag over her shoulder. "Wow, Jake, I'm impressed. You made it through a whole conversation about Rose with little more than a single double-take. You've gotten better."

"Haha." Jake moved to grab his own bag. "Yeah, well I think I'm finally moving on."

"I should hope so. You're a skater with street cred, a marginally attractive personality, and fairly impressive muscle mass. And if that doesn't get you a girl in school, you're always a dragon. Witches love dragons."

Jake took a breath to appreciate his baby sister growing up as she met with her friends on the other side of the yard. As he walked back into the building to get ready for class, though, he worried a little about what Gramps would do when she inevitably told him that Jake was planning on flat-out skipping out on training, and, if Haley went with the plan, the entire pixie convention, in order to do something he was expressly told not to do. For a while he was torn between being nervous, feeling guilty, and flat-out not caring. Hopefully getting a real conversation - not just an on-the-fly chat - with Kim and Ron would settle things out a bit. He repeatedly told himself he was doing the right thing, but part of him knew that, if he went through with all this, his relationship with his grandfather would definitely lose something.

_It's his trust, or the city's safety,_ he reasoned with himself as he sat down for his next class. But for the next hour, he didn't hear a word the teacher said.

* * *

**Okay so I know this is over a week later than I had planned on posting this and I feel like a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad person. BUT, delay comes with 50% more chapter!**

**...and that's no excuse, is it?**

**Anyway, I'm really sorry this took so long. Productive conversation is just so hard for me to write sometimes and this chapter was FULL of it.**

**A little nugget I noticed about Millard Fillmore, by the way, was that in Hero of the Hourglass, his parents - high schoolers - go to the same school he does, even though, at the time, he was only in eighth grade. Now there are some school systems that will put eighth grade higher up there, but they spent their seventh grade year at the same school, too. Conclusion? The building holds grades 6-12. So that's what I'm going with. Also, while Rotwood is the principal for the middle school, he isn't the principal for the high school. He will eventually show up in this story, but if you're wondering why he's not here so much, that's why.**

**So this update concludes chapter 1, for anyone who was counting. The next chapter jumps into Kim's perspective! Which is awesome, because I don't remember the last time I wrote the POV of a girl. Boys are tiring. **

******Again, thank you so much for your support and understanding. :)**

**-One**


	7. Chapter 2-1

Chapter II:

Kim

"I missed this," Ron said around a mouth full of nachos, kicking his feet lightly against Kim's legs.

Kim took the liberty of swallowing before asking, "What, the overcooked cheese, the sticky tables, or the _smiling_ employees?"

"Well, there's that." Ron almost choked trying to gulp down his food, but just kept on talking. "But I also missed sitting around and talking about overcooked cheese, sticky tables, and grouchy service with the most fabulous person I've ever known."

Kim felt her face turn pink. "Are you just naturally adorable, or do you try?"

"It's a combination." Kim leaned over the small, sticky, table and gave him a short kiss on the cheek. Ron's eyes immediately went all dreamy and he sighed. "I missed that, too."

Kim could second that. After high school, Kim was accepted to a university in Hong Kong, while Ron's best shot at higher education was a scholarship from Yamanouchi Ninja School for the school of his choice - as long as it was within reasonable distance from the ninja school. It had been a long debate, but seeing as Ron wasn't about to get into a school in Hong Kong with Kim any time soon, he had gone for it. In his down time between classes and on the weekends, he spent his time learning...ninja things. He was never very specific as to what they did there, but Kim was willing to respect their secrecy. Ron had told her a few months ago, though, that they had started letting him tutor some of the newer students. The amount of time Kim and Ron had been able to spend together, as well as the number of missions they went on, decreased dramatically over the last two years. But, all things considered, they were proud of each other - if not for being successful, than surviving a long distance relationship for so long.

"So what exactly is the goal today?" Ron asked. Kim saw him sneak some nachos into the pocket of his pants. Not all restaurants could let rodent customers slide, so Rufus was gnawing on his share from Ron's pockets. "We don't exactly have anywhere specific to go, and I still don't understand who this Jake kid is."

"I was hoping to clear that up today." Kim told him. "You remember meeting Rose?"

Ron thought for a moment. "Blonde, pretty face, super-ninja?"

"I don't think you of all people have a right to go on about super-ninjas."

"Yeah but half my mojo isn't exactly natural." Ron dragged his last few chips through his cheese. "If it weren't for Monkey Fist all these years ago I would be long dead."

"If you really think like that we'd all be dead." She reminded him, "You're a few steps above average with or without magic powers. You took all the fighting and survival classes I did. _And_ you were a pixie scout."

"Sure, but the monkey power's still pretty bad-ass," he admitted.

Kim chuckled. "Yes it is."

"Speaking of bad-ass, you saw Jake's throw yesterday, right?" "Where does a city kid learn stuff like that?"

Kim had some ideas, but before she could put it into words, there was a tapping on the window next to them. They both turned to see Jake waving at them from the other side of the window. Kim had told him on the phone that she and Ron would be finishing up the mandatory Bueno Nacho visit by the time he was getting out of school and told him to meet her there. Sure enough, it was three forty-five, and there he was. Kim gave him a friendly wave back.

Ron gathered up their trash. "I'm gonna grab another drink to go," he said. "I'll meet you outside."

Part of Kim wanted to say she could wait through the line again with him, but she also wanted a moment to talk to Jake by herself. She hand't exactly told Ron everything about what had happened a year ago. Kim had been hit with shock like a boulder when she went to investigate a threatened prison break only to get there in the middle of it. Not only that, but none of the escapees appeared to be anything remotely human. The biggest kickers of it all were the dragons. A dragon breaking out of prison, several dragons trying to put her back _in_ prison, and a teenage girl named Rose who seemed all too practiced in beating them up. Somewhere in that same madness, Shego had escaped and had yet to be caught. But while she could, Kim had helped Rose and her friends track down the escaped dragon, a woman they called Former Councilor Chang.

Ron met Rose when they tracked Chang to Japan, but he hadn't seen any dragons, and Rose begged Kim to let it stay that way. Kim tried to convince Rose that Ron was fully capable of handling himself, but she was insistent. There was a lot of talk about a Dragon Council, and Kim had let it drop. Now she just needed _two_ seconds to talk all that over with Jake. So while Ron made for the trash can, Kim pushed open the front door.

"Hey, Jake," Kim greeted cheerily, but her lips dropped a little as she approached. Jake was bouncing a little, back and forth on his feet, and had his bottom lip caught under an impressively pointed canine. "You alight?"

"_Okay_." Jake took a deep breath. Kim hadn't been prepared for him to look nervous. "So you came to me for help and all and I'm flattered, but there's not a lot a normal old teenager can do, ya feel me?" Kim wasn't sure she was 'feeling it', and was sure it showed on her face. Jake continued, "I mean I called up the friend who gave you my number - well my sister did - and she said you guys had quite the adventure and all and I don't know what kind of opinion you might have on the type of person you're mutual villain was, so basically what I'm trying to ask is-"

"Jake," Kim interrupted. He stopped and appeared to be holding his breath. Kim felt a little insensitive. What should she have expected? She came to this kid not even considering what it must look like from his perspective. His being a dragon was supposed to be a secret and she walked in and blew that safety out the window. He looked to think she might hold a grudge against _all_ dragons for what happened with Chang - which he'd no doubt heard about - the year before. She hadn't even made sure to make it clear what she already knew.

Kim wanted to hit herself. _Maybe I'm just a little out of practice, _she hoped. _I haven't had time for missions in a while. I'm sure it's just like riding a bike, though. Right?_

She decided to start with, "I know you're a dragon," and made sure to add, "and I don't blame _you_ for all the mistakes of your kind."

Jake deflated like a balloon. "What?" He heaved out a relieved breath as a shaky laugh. "Yo, that would have been fantastic to know, like, two minutes ago."

"Sorry," Kim apologized. She self-consciously ran a hand over the back of her neck. "I haven't told anyone. From what I learned from your friend, you handle the whole secret thing pretty seriously."

"No kidding. If secrets were miscellaneous knick-knacks, the Dragon Council would be on reality television for pack rats." Kim was glad he was relaxed enough to make jokes. "You're taking this really well, actually. I'm kind of surprised."

"Yeah, well I've been around the block a few times," she admitted.

Jake gestured a thumb through the front window of the Bueno Nacho, where Ron could be seen fumbling some cash out of his wallet for his refill. "Has he?"

Kim watched Ron's huge drink slip out of his hand and couldn't hold back an involuntary flinch when he caught it by the lid, just before it smacked into the floor. He made a more careful motion out of setting the drink on the counter before returning to his wallet. "Just as many or more, believe it or not."

"He took to the talking dog pretty quickly," Jake commented curiously. "Just what kind of stuff do you guys get into?"

"More than we should, really. We're used to surprises."

"Think he can handle meeting the magical world today?"

"Ron's not fragile, he'll be fine." Kim returned her gaze to Jake, who was staring thoughtfully around the crowd on the street. "Isn't this stuff like, major federal secret or something?" She had to ask. "Should you really be throwing this at him - or anyone - so casually?"

"Well it isn't 'federal', per say. I'm actually not sure the government itself knows, now that I think about it." His lips pulled into a curious frown at the thought. "Anyway, you two aren't exactly what one would call civilians, and helping each other won't be so easy if we're holding back with each other, right? If the Dragon Council doesn't like it, they have...methods. Besides, I've done worse and gotten away with it." Kim's eyebrows came together suspiciously. "Long story. Many long stories, actually."

"What exactly is your plan for telling Ron dragons are real?"

"How did _you_ find out?"

Kim thought back for a moment. "Well there was a lot of running, fighting, and blaring sirens involved. And a lot of rapid Chinese that I'm still not sure I understood all of. I took French in high school, Chinese was a bit of a jump when I moved to China." Jake gave a kind of disbelieving, but impressed, look. "Anyway, one moment there was a woman, next there's a reptile with wings flying out of a huge hole in the ceiling. There wasn't exactly a moment for processing."

"Is that how you guys normally work - see first, process later?"

Kim felt surprised. "I've never thought of it that way, but..." Kim touched her face, thinking back for a moment. "Yeah, that's usually how it happens."

"And how does that work out?"

"There's usually quite a bit of screaming involved." From Ron, but she wasn't about to admit that. Ron would probably admit it himself, but it wasn't her job to say things like that.

Jake ran a hand over his chin. Kim couldn't help feeling there'd been quite a bit of thinking going on between the both of them. "I think I know a way we can get the processing part done before the seeing part. Maybe there'll be less screaming. Screaming freaks out the nymphs sometimes."

Kim's eyes widened. "Nymphs?"

Ron picked that moment to walk up behind her, his straw making a terrible screech noise against the plastic lid and Rufus climbing onto his shoulder. "Hey guys," he said. "Did I miss anything?"

* * *

"So let me get this straight," Ron began after a long slurp from his drink. "It's an underground society that's pretty much exactly like normal society, except everything is magical and what-not?"

Jake nodded. He stood above them, holding onto one of the subway car's safety rails and swaying with the car motion while Kim and Ron sat in empty seats. "Yup."

"And every creature that ever made me wet the bed at night actually exists."

"All of them and more."

Kim hand't imagined having this conversation on a moving train. It wasn't like the car was crowded. There was an antsy business man on the far end and another person with their hoodie drawn over their head and headphone wires dangling out of the opening. There was also a lot more to Jake's world that she had expected. She'd heard about some and run into a few on her own, but in her life it was hard to distinguish between freak science experiment and what already existed. It was leading her to rethink a lot of the missions she'd had in the past. She could see Ron asking himself the same questions. As well as a nervous, foreboding look that accompanied visits to the zoo.

"But there's good stuff too, right?" Kim tried to sound reassuring. "You said something about nymphs?"

"Oh, sure, they're nice most of the time. Be careful, though. They have some nasty tempers."

Kim drew on more recent memories. "Unicorns?" She'd had her suspicions in the park the day before that the 'horses in unicorn costumes' weren't just 'horses in unicorn costumes'. The glowing may have had something to do with it, but she didn't want to start making assumptions.

"You helped corral a bunch of them yesterday," Jake confirmed. "There's a herd that lives in Central Park."

Ron took another long draw of his soda. "And no one's noticed," he stated.

"It's not that they don't notice," Jake said. "People just make up things to fit their own descriptions of the world. Science is even crazier than magic, sometimes." Kim couldn't help feeling his shrug was a sympathetic one. Like he'd known quite a few people to do this. He probably had friends at school who had no idea about this entire part of his life. They probably made those sorts of assumptions all the time around him and he couldn't lift a finger about it. Kim felt a stab of sympathy for Jake. Kim could tell her family and friends everything - that wasn't government classified. He must feel lonely sometimes.

Ron let Rufus have a sip of his soda on his leg. "And it's all been right under our noses, the whole time?"

"It's not like everything they do everything completely different. There's still _economics_, and _politics_ - they even have elf labor unions." Jake spat out the words like they were toxic. Which was understandable, since they sounded a lot like school topics and that's probably exactly what Jake saw them as. "Except magical also means more extreme in most cases. Black Friday is literally a nightmare, but you should see the wrestling tournaments."

Ron had this goofy expression on his face that suggested Hanuka had come early this year. He leaned back casually in his seat and cross his ankles. "You know what? I can totally handle this."

Kim looked at him dubiously. "You can?"

"Sure. What was it you said in high school? _So not the drama_. Wow, that does sound better when you say it. Anyway, I used to be afraid of monkeys. I'm sure I can get over werewolves, vampires, and gnomes."

"Gnomes?" Jake scrunched his eyebrows. "What's so scary about gnomes?"

"It's complicated," was Kim's only answer.

When the subway pulled to a stop again, both the businessman and the guy in the hoodie stepped off. Before they could do the same, Jake held out a hand. "Hold up," he said.

"Isn't this the last stop?" Ron asked.

Jake smiled. "For most people, maybe."

While they were talking, the doors slid shut. Suddenly the car lurched and there was a heavy, metal cranking noise. When Kim turned to look out the window, the station floor was shrinking beneath them. "Are we going up?"

"That depends on the physics of the portal in the ceiling-"

Ron made a choking sound. "Portal?" He turned to Kim. "When do portals ever end well? Have they ever ended well?"

"-but yes, for a moment there, we were going up," Jake finished.

When Kim looked out the window, there was sunlight spilling through it. When the doors slid open, Jake led them outside. Ron's breath left him audibly and Kim hoped she wasn't quite as loud.

"Welcome to Magus Bazaar!" Jake told them.

In a word, Magus Bazaar was...whimsical. Apparently it was a busy day, because the streets were full up with people, not-so-people, and definitely-not-people. Everyone's clothes were some weird mix of medieval and current. While a man with a horse's body for legs strode by in plate armor and a lance in one hand, a woman with squid tentacles for legs slithered(?) past in an NYU hoodie. There were more abnormal and strange creatures than Kim had names for. Jake was greeting the occasional creature and gave the horse-man (wan't centaur the word for those?) a high-five. Even stranger than that, were the things being sold. Kim saw jars of eyeballs, unnaturally colored plants, and she thought she heard someone yelling about guano. The look on Ron's face probably mirrored the awe and shock on her own.

Ron poked Jake in the arm. "So you're one of the, uh..." He pointed around the street.

Jake blinked. "Oh, did we leave that out?" He pointed to his chest and said with the utmost pride, "_I'm_ a _dragon_."

Ron looked him up and down. He put a kind of pout on his face and crossed his arms. "Okay, even I have a limit. You're like, five feet tall. "

Kim could have sworn she saw smoke leave Jake's nostrils. "I am five foot six, you're maybe two inches taller than me! And it's not like I'm a dragon _all_ the time. We're natural shape-shifters." To prove his point, he held out his arm. White-hot fire sparked from his hand and traveled up his arm, startling Rufus from Ron's shoulder. When the flames backed away, it left Jake's arm covered in cooling red scales and his fingers replaced with sharp claws. Ron moved a finger to poke at Jake's scales, but before he could they were engulfed in fire again and there was nothing left but human skin.

With the expression on Ron's face, one might guess his birthday had come early. "So," he gestured to all of Jake, "all of you can do that?"

"Yeah, but it's not the most convenient thing to walk around as. The streets are crowded right now, but maybe I can show you later."

Regaining his courage, Rufus leaped from Ron's shoulder to Jake's. He scurried down Jake's arm and sniffed it, Jake lifting him arm so Rufus wouldn't fall. Then he pulled at the sleeve and looked up at Jake, squeaking curiously.

"Yeah, what happens to your clothes?" Ron agreed. Or at least Kim thought he was agreeing. Rufus-speak was never quite her forté.

Jake stared at his own jacket sleeve for a second and shrugged. "I never really thought about it." He turned to lead them down the street. "Come on, I can show you around."

Before Ron could follow, Kim put a hand on his shoulder. "And you thought the monkey stuff was unnatural." Kim didn't miss the extra upward twitch to his lips.

A little ways down the street and multiple close saves to Ron's safety involving magical tea leaves later, Jake turned to Kim. "You've got picture of that Shego chick, right?" Kim searched her pocket for a moment to verify first, but eventually she pulled out a copy of Shego's mug-shots and nodded. "We can show it around while we're here. See if anyone knows anything. Federal government has nothing gossiping witches."

"Good idea," Kim agreed. "Here..." Using the Kimmunicator on her wrist, she printed off a few extra copies. She handed them to Jake. "Give one to Ron, too. I'll start asking around."

Jake took them but he had a bit of hesitance in his expression. "Okay, but be careful. Some of these guys are total creeps."

Kim smirked confidently. "I'm pretty good at handling creeps, if I do say so myself."

* * *

Kim wished she could say she was getting more out of this little field trip than an brand new perspective on the world, but an hour later, and she still had nothing to show for their mission than all of the miscellaneous junk Ron could both buy with human money and fit into his pockets. She'd spent most of their time talking to the more approachable locals, hoping to get at least one sighting of Shego out of it.

At this point, though, she was beginning to wonder if her hunch was wrong. Something about Shego's showing up in New York City had felt different. Everything else so far had been random and in smaller towns. They hadn't been able to put down any connection of any sort between the locations. When they'd gotten the anonymous tip about New York, though, something about it felt...different. Not just the tip itself, but when she'd found Shego scaring the herd of unicorns in Central Park. In every other place they'd chased her to, Shego pulled her vanishing act before they could chase her off location. This time she stuck around long enough for Kim to driver her out of the park, down the street, and for the police to put up a barricade and for Ron to bring back-up.

The initial plan in contacting Jake hadn't been for him to help out immediately; it was more like long-term reassurance. If they'd ever come through the city again, they'd need someone they already knew. But then unicorns hadn't been part of the plan either. Did Shego know they were unicorns when she attacked? Maybe that was the connection. If everywhere she'd hit had some sort of magical influence, then none of the contacts she would have been able to pull up before now would have know anything about it. Kim made a mental note to ask Jake more on that later, and returned to looking around for faces she hadn't questioned yet. It was getting hard to tell the difference between the whiskers and the face antennae.

"Excuse me." Kim startled at a tap on her shoulder. "I couldn't help but notice; you look lost." A man had come up behind her. An elegant hooded cloak covered most of his appearance, but she could still see the tips of well-kept hair and an expensive suit under the heavy fabric. In any other circumstance, talking to someone in a hood and cloak would set of alarm bells - not to say that it wasn't - but he was at least the seventh person she'd seen in Magus Bazaar sporting similar clothes.

"I'm looking for someone, actually," Kim pulled her copy of Shego's picture from her pocket and held to for him to see. "Any chance you can tell me where to find this woman?"

His eyes narrowed in thought. "Can't say that I can. Is _she_ lost?"

"In a way," Kim explained. "She's dangerous, and if you see her you should call...whoever you see as the authority."

The man pointed over Kim's shoulder. "I believe that would be him,"

Kim turned and saw Jake introducing Ron to a woman at one of the stalls across the street. "Oh, yeah, I'm here with Jake," she added. "We have reason to believe she's up to something here - in New York City, I mean - and we're working together."

"I see. You're in good hands, then. Everyone's heard the countless feats of heroism of the _American Dragon_." The man kindly handed Kim back the photo. "If I happen to cross this woman, I'll be sure to let you know."

_American Dragon?_ Kim had assumed that whatever role dragons played in magical society, it was a large one. The few she'd met with Rose in Hong Kong were always spoken to with respect and Rose would have directed her to Jake if he weren't useful in some way. When she found out how young Jake was, though, any thoughts of him being anything more than a kid with superpowers and connections had left her thoughts completely. She hadn't even considered just how important he might be to these people. In retrospect, she felt guilty. She had made quite a name for herself by Jake's age. It felt wrong to not be able to so easily expect the same of other people.

Personal thoughts aside, Kim nodded her thanks. "We appreciate your cooperation, sir."

"Call me Eli," he told her, extending a hand.

Kim took his hand in her own. He had a firm grip, but his hands were soft. "Kim," she returned. "Kim Possible."

"KP!" Kim turned around when Ron called across the plaza. He was waving his arms and holding some new gadget in one hand. "Come check this out!"

She turned to say goodbye to Eli before leaving, but when she turned around again, he was gone.

* * *

They left Magus Bazaar when the sun started setting. Kim and Ron took the subway back to their hotel. Jake had gotten off at one of the first stops and told them he could fly home from there. Ron had wanted to go out with him to see his wings, but Kim didn't want to have to pay for their tickets all over again, and sat him back down. Instead, Ron babbled on for a while about all his new stuff, the conversations he'd had, and about the one woman they'd met with the spider legs. After a few stops, though, he grew quiet. He toyed with some sort of play-gadget for child harpys that Kim couldn't even begin to describe and started chewing his lip. Rufus had fallen asleep on his leg to the clatter of the tracks.

Kim bumped shoulders with him. "Something on your mind?"

Ron didn't look at her, and his voice came out rather hurt. "You knew about all of this? And you never told me?"

Kim took his hand. "Not _all_ of it," she told him, honestly. "Mostly just the dragon thing. Rose asked me not to talk about it, and..." Kim's cheeks burned guiltily and she swallowed. "I'm sure I would have told you eventually, but we're not exactly neighbors anymore, Ron."

Ron took her hand back. "We're still country neighbors," he said. "That's gotta count for something, right?"

Kim squeezed his hand. "Of course it does."

There was a moment where Ron just looked at her with his own version of the puppy-dog face that Kim was sure he didn't even realize he had. He was no doubt thinking five hundred different things that, even after closing in on two decades with this boy, she could never quite decipher. But a few blinks later, he was stretching an arm over her head, oh so casually pulling her close, and saying, "So you know those horse rides in Central Park? Jake says he knows one that's pulled by a unicorn. Said he could hook us up with a discount. And by discount, I mean free, because I don't know about you, but I'm flat out of leprechaun gold."

Kim laughed and smiled, happy just to see the good old Ron she'd always known. "That sounds great, Ron."

* * *

**HA. TAKE THAT GODS OF PROCRASTINATION AND WRITERS BLOCK. I BEAT YOU BOTH WITH PURE WILLPOWER AND A REALLY LONG YOUTUBE PLAYLIST.**

**Okay so the reason this took weeks longer than expected is because I have all of part I mapped out by the chapter but this chapter specifically did not. want. to. come. out. right. I mean URGH. I think I wrote this three different times. I really wanted to get through this part of the story fast but I also didn't want to whip by it too fast. The clueless characters no longer being clueless characters is one of my favorite parts of any crossover, and I double cross my heart that later in the story you will get Kim's adventure with Rose in full, HD, technicolor flashback. But we have to do this first because plot reasons that will make sense later. But DANG this was more frustrating than it should have been. Like it wasn't even that complicated, URGH.**

**Okay, I'm done with the caps.**

**Bonus, though, this chapters twice as long as my average chapter, and is the longest one yet. I've been trying to keep them even-ish so you know what to expect, but it is what it is, I guess. I'm already working on the next chapter, and it's flowing much more smoothly out of my head. I will FIGHT to have it done by the end of the week. **

**All the support for this story _never_ goes unnoticed or unappreciated. They all hold little bits of my heart in them, and I love them all. :)**

**-One**


	8. Chapter 2-2

In the day or so that she'd known him so far, Kim had discovered several things about Jake Long. The most relevant at the moment were that he loved to fly, and that he did not like sitting still. Apparently mashing this like and dislike into one happenstance was some sort of dragon nightmare-fuel because the guy just did not seem to understand that when the fasten seat-belt sign in on, you plop your butt down and you fasten your seat belt. Because it doesn't matter if the jet was built by twin geniuses and has an even smarter auto-pilot system, turbulence can happen. In most cases, it likes to wait until someone just _happens_ to be standing up when they're not supposed to. For the mean time, though, Jake was at least sitting down in the seat across from her.

Kim and Ron had made previous arrangements to spend the weekend making a trip to a prison in the southern Appalachians (specific location classified) that housed one Dr. Drakken. Drakken was their closest bet on finding out what was up with Shego, but they'd yet to have an excuse to be anywhere near the area. Somewhere in the exchange of plans with Jake that morning, however, Jake had gotten himself Ron's seat on the plane and Ron elected to stay behind in New York City. The plane had taken off little more than twenty minutes ago, but Kim had already decided she was never taking Jake on a plane again. She was slapping his hand away from where he was tapping the windows when her wrist Kimmunicator went off.

Wade's face appeared on the screen when she answered. "Okay, I just got off the line with Ron, but I think he's in the middle of something," he said. "There was a lot of screaming in the background."

Kim felt alarmed. "Screaming?" Just then, the fasten seat-belt sign clicked off and Jake practically leapt to his feet and started pacing around the open cabin space.

"Not the villain attack kind of screaming. More like the loose monkey's at the zoo screaming." Wade shook the matter off loosely. "Now recap me on the details. Why did you leave Ron in New York?"

"Well," Kim started, "Jake insisted on coming and Ron didn't want to leave Jake's thirteen year old sister to handle things on her own."

"I did fine when I was thirteen!" Jake called from where he'd paced to the back end of the cabin. Kim and Ron's (now Jake's) seats sat facing each other with a small table between them. The passenger space of the jet was about the size of a small living room and came complete with carpeting, a stereo system, and three generations of PlayStations. Kim didn't know how many allowances the tweebs had been saving to put together the jet, but she had a feeling they hadn't exactly held onto some of the more expensive parts her dad would bring home. She already knew Wade kept a close watch on their eBay account.

"I think it's an older brother thing," she tried to tell Wade.

Wade didn't look all that convinced. "But isn't Hana still only three?"

"He wants to be ready for when she's old enough to actually talk back to him. He also said it wasn't like Drakken is going to even remember his name, anyway."

Wade shrugged and admitted, "True."

"How bad is this Drakken guy anyway?" Jake asked, coming up behind, and leaning on the back of, his chair. "On a scale of take over the world to steal candy from a baby."

"That's not a very accurate scale," Wade criticized. "For example, Shego could probably take over the world if she applied herself, but she is also capable of _literally_ stealing candy from children in strollers."

Jake gave an impressed whistle and did some sort of imaginary math on this fingers. "That's quite a skill set when you add the glowing hands and the kung-fu ninja skills."

Kim turned her attention to Jake. "I think there's a kitchenette in the back with soda and peanuts. Want to get us some?"

"Sure." Jake shrugged nonchalantly, but Kim could still see the itch to move around in his step as he walked.

"Who is this guy, anyway, Kim?" Wade looked concerned. "I don't think you've never trusted someone to swap with Ron quite this fast."

"Everything's fine, Wade," she assured him, "don't worry about it."

Wade still looked skeptical, but he said, "Alright. I'll keep running my searches on Shego. I'll call if you I get an update."

"Please and thank you!" Kim smiled, and the call disconnected.

_Wade may throw magic around in video games_, Kim reassured herself, _but no way can he take that kind of hit to his world of science. _It had been mostly Kim's decision to keep Wade mostly in the dark for this mission. She and Ron had debated it the night before at their hotel, even to just ask Jake if it was okay if they told him, but Kim was against it. Not just for the sake of Wade's sanity, but because she had a feeling Jake was already in a world of trouble with various people, and adding on to that would only add fuel to the fire. And not the kind of fire Jake could deflect with scales.

A few moments later, Jake came back with a chip-sized bag of peanuts and two small bottles of coke. "Okay so there were like, four different sodas and three different kinds of peanuts, so I guessed." He dropped his catch on the small table and sat back in his chair. He quickly replaced his pacing with incessant peanut munching. "So why are you only just now going to see this Doctor guy?" he asked. "Shouldn't he have been step one?"

"This jet belongs to my dweeb brothers'," she explained. "It's hard enough to get them to loan it to me, and jet fuel is expensive."

Jake's eyes widened and looked around the interior of the jet again. "This is your brothers'?"

"Yeah. They built it from the scraps my dad brings home."

"Do you have a family of rocket scientists or something?" he asked around a mouth of half-chewed peanuts.

Kim held back a gag with all the practice of an older sister. "No, just my dad. My mom's a surgeon and my brothers are still in high school."

Jake's jaw stopped mid-chew. "You know what?" He swallowed. "I'm going to stop asking."

Kim smiled. "I get that a lot." She opened her bottle of soda with a hiss. "What about you?"

"My dad's a paper-pusher and my mom's a caterer. Nothing special. But then our last name isn't _Possible_."

"Sure," she pacifically agreed. "But your last name _is_ Long."

"So?" Jake looked like he genuinely didn't understand.

"It's Chinese for dragon." Kim knew what it meant because she spoke Chinese. Maybe Jake didn't speak it, but with at least seventeen years with Long as his last name, she figured he must have looked it up at least once. His thoughtful expression, however, suggested otherwise. "You did know that right?"

"Yeah, but..." Jake scratched a hand over his stiff hair. "You know, I never really thought about it," he admitted.

"How did you not think about that?" she asked, amazed.

"Well the name Long is from my dad's side, but my powers come from my mom's," he explained.

"That's a little ironic."

Jake shrugged and ate another handful into his huge bag of peanuts. He pointed to something strapped to the floor next to the table. "What's in the box?"

"Oh," Kim reached over, unstrapped it, and lifted the cardboard box onto the table. It landed with a thump as it's contents shifted. While she spoke, Kim pulled off the lid and took out several stacks of paper, handing them to Jake. "This is information on all the different locations Shego has appeared since her escape in China. We must have had a dozen different people look over it and we can't find any connection to the different locations at all." Jake took a few pages in his free hand and looked it over, chewing thoughtfully. "I was hoping maybe you could find something we can't."

Jake took the liberty of washing down the food in his mouth with soda before answering this time. "Hoping the Am Drag can drop a little magical knowledge on you?" he asked, brimming with confidence. "Bring it on."

Kim tried to give him an unassuming look. "'Am Drag?'"

"American Dragon, it's...I was thirteen and it stuck," Jake tried to clarify.

"Mm-hmm," Kim hummed. She snatched the peanut bag out of Jake's hands, leaned back in her chair and took to staring out the window. Jake gave a tired huff and dove into the box of pages.

A good ten minutes later, a large part of Kim wanted to leave Jake to his digging. It was probably how they would be getting their best information related to the mission; but the socialite in her was swimming in questions and driven by the simple enjoyment of speaking in English again. It wasn't that she minded spending most of her time speaking another language - the whole being fluent in a second language thing was actually a source of pride for her - English just rolled off her tongue so much more easily.

It wasn't horribly long before she got bored with staring out of the window that she caved to herself. She asked, "Where is it you were supposed to be this weekend?"

"A pixie convention," Jake said without looking up. "Couple thousand pixies close out part of Central Park under the disguise of construction, or cleaning, or what-not, and hold a big get-together. Kind of like some tricked out family reunion."

Kim tried to imagine anything like what Jake was saying, but she wasn't entirely sure what real pixies looked like, and all she could picture was a hoard a living cuddle buddies at a carnival. She was pretty certain it was nothing like that. "Why did they need you there?" she asked.

"It's not really _me_, per-say," Jake answered. Somehow he was holding the conversation while flipping around a few more pieces of paper. "Dragons are looked up to in the magical community. We're kind of like world representatives."

Kim remembered what Eli had said about the American Dragon the day before, and Jake's own 'Am Drag' nickname. "And you're the representative for America?"

"Yeah, something like that. But my sister Haley's in training, too. She's like my vice-president, I guess."

"She takes over if something goes wrong?"

"That's one way to put it, yeah. She's like my sidekick, too." Jake looked up from his work to glance out the window and he his feet shuffled anxiously on the floor. "She can handle the pixies better than I could anyway. I think it's a girl thing. Besides, she's got Ron my friends to help out, too." Jake finally took the time to look up at Kim, but his eyes seemed to favor the view out of the window. "We were thinking that maybe the convention was the reason Shego was here. Some of the magic pixies have is pretty powerful. If Shego found out about them somehow, which wouldn't be too hard in the prison she was being held in, she could be after that."

"If that was your theory, why didn't you stay behind to help out?" Kim asked. "You're obviously worried about her."

Jake's face went a little pink. "The convention lasts through Monday, and all the biggest events happen Sunday night. That's when the attendance is highest, too. If anyone is going to do anything, it'll be then. So as long as we're home by, say, noon tomorrow, we're golden."

"This trip shouldn't even last the whole day. It's barely two right now and I was hopping to be in and out of there in just over an hour." Kim double checked the clock on her Kimmunicator and did the math in her head. "I should have you home before bed time."

"First, for the record, I do _not_ have a bed time. But see?" He casually leaned into his chair and tossed his ankles over each other. "We're fine. "

Twenty minutes later, Jake was looking a little less 'fine'. As he read through each page and double checked each location, the little groove between his eyebrows would grow deeper. Every time he moved onto a new stack, he'd readjust where his bottom lip sat between his teeth, give an irate sigh, and start his process over.

"I don't see anything," he finally admitted tossing some papers back onto their pile. "I mean, sure, they all have some sort of magical influence, but then what town doesn't? This one was a battle site in a hobgoblin war, a couple of these are territorial boarders for a number of different creatures, but nothing is specifically connected in anyway. I guess you could say they all have connections to elvish trade routes but there are a ton of different types of elves involved over a nearly four...five hundred year time period so it's a bit of a stretch." When Jake looked up at Kim, his expression fell away to one of surprised curiosity. "What?"

Kim hadn't realized the mild shock that had played onto her face. A lot of Jake had come off as a regular, if not fairly popular, teenager. She could tell he tried to hide it for the sake of more polite conversation, but he'd let slip just enough 'yo's and 'dawg's to give Kim the impression that Jake was the kind of guy to hand around skate parks, sleep in class, and do ridiculous stunts around town with his friends that would give his mother a heart attack. She knew it was a stereo type, but it was one that was fitting Jake rather well up until the point he began spitting out historical facts like they lived on the tip of his tongue. Facts that must be bouncing around with at least several dozen other categories of information about the a magical world he had sworn to protect and could probably sort through and spit out just as fast. It was probably exactly what was expected of him - and Kim found that kind of sad.

"What kind of grades do you get?" she asked.

Jake let his shoulders rise and fall. "Cs and Ds usually, but I've got an A in gym. Why?"

Kim shrugged and hummed an embarrassed sort of "I don't know."

Jake's lips pulled in a straight line. "Not all of us can so easily balance world saving and puberty," he said, rather coldly. "I'm expected to learn everything for two different worlds, and not to mention that dragons have a whole other set of hormones than humans. It's like double puberty."

Kim moved a hand up and down her arm. "I think...that's a little more than I needed to know."

Jake ran a tired hand over his face. "Sorry." The poor kid looked like hadn't had a full nights sleep in at least a week; he had growing bags under his eyes and his shirt looked like he'd slept in it. She hadn't really noticed past the glowing confidence and swagger in his step.

"It's fine," she told him, sincerely. "You must have a huge load on your shoulders for someone your age." Jake looked like he had something to say, but if he did, he did come out with it. "If you ever need someone to talk to, go for it."

Jake mulled it over for several moments, his eyes skating over where his hands rested on the table. It was quiet, but it was genuine when he said, "Thanks."

* * *

It wasn't long before they could see the cold prison nestled between two steep slopes from their windows. It was really just a dark smudge against the mountain side, concealed by the mountains' shadows and the overcast sky.

In the empty time, Jake had gone through the entire box of papers at least twice and still managed to come up flat. A fact he didn't seem to be taking lightly with himself. When Kim finally convinced him to put everything away, he did so grudgingly and with a final glance at each page before before he finally shut the lid. When the prison came into view, Jake brought up the question Kim had been waiting for, "How are we landing?" he asked. "There isn't an air strip."

"No there isn't." Kim responded to Jake's trepidation with a smile that she felt was a little devilish. "Parachutes are in the back cabinet, next to the Final Fantasy collection."

Jake looked nothing short of thrilled.

But when Kim moved away from the window to get the parachutes, the plane gave a hard jerk. A firm hand caught Kim's arm before she could fall. Jake had himself steadied against a chair. "What was that?" The jet gave a short jerk and a muffled explosion sounded behind the doors of the empty control room. "I could have sworn you said this thing was automatic."

Kim's mouth was dry. "It is."

A dip from the floor of the jet had them both falling off their feet. Another explosion and the cockpit door swung open. Smoke pooled out into the cabin and began collecting across the ceiling. In the doorway stood something Kim had no name for. It was almost completely transparent save for a ragged outline and glaring red eyes. It's eyes held Kim's startled ones. She almost shrieked when a cold hand ghosted around her arm. Another creature was melting out of the shadows behind her and had a tough grip on her forearm. The touch of it's hand was making her skin crawl.

She gave a desperate tug away, but it's grip was terrifyingly solid. "Let go!"

Without warning, the creature puffed out like a broken dust cloud and something hit the carpet hard. When the smoke cleared, Kim saw it was Jake's fist. Kim turned to thank him until she saw a shadow move over his shoulder.

"Look out!"

Without thinking, she pulled Jake out of the way and swung out her foot, landing cleanly through another creature's face, scattering it like the last one.

Kim and Jake helped pull each other to their feet. "Thanks," Jake said.

"Don't mention it."

Not wasting a moment, another creature formed and reached for them, but Kim stopped it with another quick kick to the face. The plane gave a huge lurch to one side and all the cabin lights flickered out. Not two heartbeats later, the dim emergency lights were buzzing to life, barely illuminating a dozen or more creatures pulling themselves out of the shadows. "What are these things?"

"Shade demons," Jake told her. His voice was full of confusion and a little panic. "But they shouldn't- I've only ever seen them when-" Jake stuttered.

"Jake, focus!" Kim was tempted to give him a good slap if it would get him to stop rambling, but she held herself back. "How can we get rid of them?"

Jake visibly shook himself. "Light. Sunlight, fire, anything. I don't think dragon fire's the best choice on a plane, though."

Just then, a low-pitched siren started wailing through the jet and Tim's (or was it Jim's?) voice started playing over the speakers. "SYSTEM FAILURE. PREPARE FOR EMERGENCY LANDING. I REPEAT. SYSTE-EM F-F-FAILURE. PREP-PARE FOR E-EMERGENY-Y-Y-Y-Y-" The voice glitched until and sputtered to an eerie halt.

Kim could only barely see Jake gulp in the semi-darkness. "That's never a good sign."

The shade demons had them surrounded center of the floor. Just out the window was a gorgeous view of the mountains that would be cool if they weren't hurtling towards them at a hundred miles an hour.

"I don't think the plane is making it out of this one," Kim admitted. One of the demons got brave and launched itself at her and she bravely sent her fist through it's face. It dissipated in moments, only for a new one to step out of the shadows. "Think you can get to the parachutes with your fire?"

"No time!" A quick glance over her shoulder showed Jake punching through several shade demons at a time, fire sparking on his hands. "I've got a better idea." He took one of her arms in his hands. "Whatever you do, don't let go."

Flames erupted at his feet and they were falling.

* * *

**I did it! I finished by the end of the week! With about two and a half hours to spare, but, in my defense, I managed to crack and destroy my laptop screen on Sunday and we didn't get it fixed till Wednesday. So there's that.**

**Anyway, I've got a solid start on the next chapter, and as long as I settle into my dorm quickly next week, I may be able to turn out one more chapter before my classes start. Wow, that's a terrifying thought. **

**As always, thank you so much for your support! One day I'll find a clever way of saying that, but today is not that day. **

**-One**


	9. Chapter 2-3

Falling out/off of planes/hover-cars/blimps/helicopters was something Kim had done more times than she could count. All the experiences sort of blended together after a while and thinking back on it would only reward her with the roar of the air past her eardrums, the plastering resistance as it hit her skin, and the varying images of fast-approaching whatever it was that covered the Earth, waiting impatiently for her face to connect with it. Luckily, the ground hadn't had such a glory yet.

Regardless of past experience, though, little could have prepared her for this particular drop. Largely because she didn't see it coming, but that wasn't anything new. Actually, the fireball wasn't so much of a stretch either, but what came out of the fireball was quite the kicker.

After falling through the floor, Kim could only watch as the jet went on without them, continuing until it smashed in the rocky cliff-face. Rather than erupting into a large fireball, like in the movies, it simply crushed in on itself; much like a high speed car crash and a brick wall. Certain scraps were still flaming from their escape, but, miraculously, nothing else caught fire as the pieces dropped down to the ground.

Eventually Kim realized she wasn't falling. Something was holding her by the wrists as the world swung beneath her feet.

"Are you okay?"

As Kim looked up, the sun shone into her eyes, but every few moments something would swoop by and block the light. In those gaps, she saw where the flapping wings attached to a red, scaly body. Bright, black eyes blinked back at her - eyes that she recognized. "Jake?"

"Yo," he answered. The voice was definitely his, if not a little warped and deeper. The spikes on his head matched his hair to the tips. He had his clawed hands (or did they call them paws?) wrapped around her wrists, and he let out a grunt as he readjusted his grip so she wouldn't fall. His scales felt smooth an warm when her hands moved across them, but when it slid the opposite direction they felt horribly rough against her bare skin. She regretted not putting her mission gloves on ahead of time.

Jake managed to re-grip the hold on her wrist and called down, "Think you can swing onto my shoulders?"

Kim responded with a nod and adjusted her own grip before swinging her legs. When she built up the momentum, she was able to swing herself up, around his neck, and land shakily on what Kim assumed were Jake's shoulders. There was a gap between the spines on his back large enough to fit two, maybe three people. Kim tried to sit as far forward as she could, gripping a spike in both hands for balance. Jake leveled out so she could sit up straight, and as soon as she was stable she slipped her gloves out of her pocked and over the scratches on her hands.

It took her another moment and a piece of the bravery she had no trouble finding in herself before she really looked up. Between the beats of Jake's wings was the most beautiful view of the mountains she'd ever seen - and she'd been in the mountains more than a few times. The rolling slopes off trees and the tumbling cliff faces were always obscured by window frames, parachute sails, or dusted smoke from a rocket pack. The scenery stretched out all around them, the horizon blocked by mountain peaks and the mid-day sun raining light on the scenery.

Kim was distracted when Jake curved his neck around to see her. "What exactly was the original plan after the jumping off the plane part?" he asked.

Kim had to blink a few times before she could look back to the side of Jake's head she could see and focus on the moment. "There's a clearing on the other side of the mountain that it would have landed on," she explained, pointing over the mountain. "After we were done in the prison, we could have borrowed an ATV and it would have been our ride back to New York."

"And now?"

Kim sighed. "Let's just take this one step at a time." As part of her response, she risked a few moments of removing her hands from Jake's shoulders to press the buttons on her wrist Kimmunicator.

There was a noise akin to a phone ringing, and the camera fuzzed into a view of her brother's face, half buried by pillows and hair tossed around. "Tim speaking," he said, groggily. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and looked again. "Oh, hey sis."

Kim took in the bed-head and the pajamas and asked, "Were you sleeping?"

Tim rolled his eyes. "I _was_. Then you called, and I woke up, and I answered, and now I'm talking to you. What's up?"

"Where's Jim?" she asked.

Tim pulled himself and his tablet to a sitting position on his bed. "I set up the jet last night, he stays in the remote control room this morning while it's flying. He lost the coin toss." He squinted his eyes and they danced around his screen. "Where are you? Did you land already?"

Kim placed her free arm over her hair, trying to still it from the wind of Jake's wing beats. She coughed nervously. "Yeah, uhm, about the jet-"

"_Tim!_" There was a stomping sound from Tim's end of the call and the door behind him slammed open. Jim was red in the face and his hands were balled into fists. "_Kim crashed our-! _Oh," he hissed when he say Kim on the call screen, "hey, _sis_."

"Jim, what's wrong?" Tim asked.

Jim crossed his arms tight over his chest. "Kim smashed our jet into the side of a mountain."

Tim turned back to Kim, wide-eyed. "You _what_?!"

"It wasn't my fault!" she pleaded. "How is it my fault a plane crashed while on auto-pilot?"

Jim crossed the room and leaned over the bed next to his brother. "I haven't salvaged the security feeds yet, but whatever you did to the cockpit killed any remote control I _would_ have had when the auto-system failed. And you didn't do anything to fix it!"

Kim felt her own anger ticking. "We were hurdling towards a mountain! There was no time to-"

Jim cut her off. "You owe us a jet." His arm moved over the camera and the feed cut out.

Jake let out a whistle that was, perhaps unintentionally, accompanied by a lick of fire spitting out between sharp teeth. "Harsh."

"I'm sure they'll calm down," Kim sighed, hopefully. "Can you take us down behind those trees?" She pointed to the forest about a hundred yards from the prison gate's front entrance. "We might as well do what we came for."

* * *

They were greeted at the front gate by Warden Matthews. She was a strong women with a face full of distrust and arms full of muscle. When she asked why they had failed to land in the pre-planned field, Kim effortlessly brushed it off with fleeting comments about wind currents and weather anomalies. "These things happen all the time," she added, expertly, but the Warden's face remained rather closed off.

When she asked about the explosion that had apparently echoed through the valley, Jake jumped in helpfully confused with, "What explosion?" The Warden seemed to believe Jake even less, but, regardless, she lead the inside. While they went through a lengthy security check, Kim tried her best to explain their situation while working around the demon-monsters on the jet, the crashing of the jet itself - which would lead to them falling without parachutes and not dying in impact with the ground - and why they suddenly don't have a ride back.

While she was dancing around with words, Jake popped out a story involving a broken fuselage in the jet's engine and that it would need to go back for repairs before flying anybody anywhere, so they were stuck. Of course this still didn't explain the lack of parachute jumping but Warden Matthews made a face similar to the one Mr. Brakin used to make while listening to why Ron was late for class. She didn't ask anymore questions, though, so Kim filed that little obstacle under 'win'.

While the outside of the prison was all levels of impressive, the inside was about as damp and dreary as any other prison Kim had ever visited. Concrete walls, iron bars wherever they might fit, and a deafening thunder every time the air system kicked on. To get back to the cells, they had to go through the living quarters for the guards and Warden Matthews. They would never be allowed back into the holding area itself, but there was a room that went almost completely unused that was supposed to be for friends/family/lawyer visits. Warden Matthews took her time and gave Jake especially hard looks while informing them that under no circumstances should they leave the staff and visiting areas of the facility. Kim hadn't really thought about how, for a high security prison in the middle of nowhere like this one, the commute home for the guards and staff would be just as hard as a prisoners escape route. She was sure that was part of where the prison got its reputation, but she didn't dwell in it long.

A glance back at Jake told a different story. He stared around at the walls almost like a tourist. Not like there was a lot to look at - just concrete walls, concrete floors, and concrete ceilings - but non the less he took the time to glance down every hall and peek out every window as they followed Warden Matthews through the building. "First time in a prison?" she asked.

Jake jogged to catch up after getting caught staring through the iron bars of a particularly large window. "No," he said defensively. "Just my first time in a..._normal _prison." Jake made a visible effort to not give or make direct contact with the shaded look Warden Matthews gave him over her shoulder. Kim saw him swallow before he asked, "What did Drakken do to get put in a place like this, anyway? Blow up a bank?"

"They arrested him for jailbreak, actually," Kim told him. Jake's forehead creased in surprise. Kim shrugged one shoulder. "He was having a bit of a turn around when he was arrested. Started doing some good work, but pardons are hard to come by for multiple felonies. Felonies that gave him a lifetime sentence."

"This facility also makes available a safe working space for more...intellectually gifted, inmates," Warden Matthews provided. "It gives them a chance to give back to the society they so _ruthlessly_ rebelled against." Kim couldn't help but notice the way the Warden spat about disruption to society and, when she turned around, she caught Jake shifting uncomfortably in her shadow.

Kim briefly wondered what kind of things he got up to before they approached a large steel door at the end of the hall. Warden Matthews unlocked it with a key on her belt and heaved back the large metal strut that held the door closed.

"You go ahead and have your meeting. We'll try and figure something out for you by the time you finish." She held the door open while they walked through, and shut it tight behind them. The lock slid back into place with a muffled clang.

On the other side of the door was an equally stuffy, poorly lit, room furnished with only a benched table, and two security guards. A guard was posted by the door where they came from, and the door on the opposite side that no doubt lead to the cell blocks. Drakken was already seated; blue as ever, clad in orange, and handcuffed to the table in front of him. Kim took the seat across from him while Jake hung back, standing with his hands in his pockets and glancing at the guards like he was unimpressed - like he could do better.

Drakken wasted no time cracking a familiar grin when he caught sight of Jake. "Oh, who's the new boy? That other buffoon finally fall through?" Kim was painfully aware that he didn't use Ron's name. "He seems a little young for you, though."

Jake huffed in disgust. "Yo, that is whack, man. No offense, Kim."

Kim wanted to say "None taken," Jake was a little young for her tastes, but didn't want to give Drakken the pleasure. Instead, she took a deep, professional breath and folded her hands on the table. "We know you and Shego are up to something, Drakken," she said levelly. "Just tell us what it is now, and I'll see what I can do about your parole."

"Shego?" He gave a dramatic scoff and equal hair flip. "I haven't heard from her in years."

Kim's eyebrows lowerd. "Then why is she running around out there causing random havoc? How did she pull of that escape from prison?"

Drakken looked startled. "I wasn't aware she had even been arrested. They don't exactly broadcast the local news in here, you know. I'm lucky I know what generation of iPhone we're up to. It's the 4, right?"

Jake pulled out his phone and waved it. "This is a 5s."

"_Blasted_," Drakken swore, pounding the table. "Anyway," Drakken assorted himself, took a camping breath, leaned forward, and asked excitedly, "Do you think she'll come for me?"

Kim couldn't say she didn't expect the question, but she didn't want to break the bad news to him, either. If Shego had been out this long already, odds were she wasn't coming. Instead she beat around the bush. "If she does, they've already heightened your security until she's caught. You're not going anywhere." Kim stood from her seat. "I guess if you _really_ don't know anything—"

"Wait!" Drakken almost shouted. "Do you-" He fumbled his words and looked down at his small hands. "Do you really think she's working without me?"

Kim chewed her tongue before answering. She knew they were enemies and all, but there was such despair in his voice. "She's never been one to work on her own," she admitted. "But she hasn't been following any pattern consistent with your usual villain club. She hasn't been following any pattern at all, really."

"Well she's never taken villainy at the same angle."

Jake spoke up honestly, "From what I've seen, none of you take villainy at the same angle as the rest of the world," he said. "Though your plots are the most abstract, gotta give you cred for that."

"If it helps at all," Drakken said, "Shego has never done anything without a purpose before." Kim had to take a moment to process Drakken being semi-helpful and it must have showed on her face because he clarified, "There may not be a pattern, but that doesn't mean there isn't a reason."

Jake's face scrunched in thought. "That doesn't really make sense."

"No…" Kim brought a hand to her chin, thoughts racing. "Maybe it does. I can barely believe I'm saying this, but," she pulled in a deep breath and sighed. "Thanks. I'll see what I can do about getting you a television or something."

"Yeah, _whatever_," he said loudly, leaning away and crossing his arms. "You think you're all that—"

"But I'm not," she finished for him. She gave him an almost fond smile due knew he would hate. "Nice to see you, too."

When the door was safely shut behind them and they started walking back to the guards quarters, Jake pointed behind them and asked, "Dude, did those two have a thing, or?"

Kim's mind was immediately assaulted with the mental image of Drakken _and Shego._ "Ugh," Kim shook her head hastily and held up her hands. "I don't even want to think about it."

* * *

"Bad news is, the next ride out of here isn't till tomorrow." The warden had greeted them back inside the officer's quarters with a regretful expression on her face. While Kim and Jake were in their meeting, she had made phone calls about getting them back to New York. Or at least out of the mountains. "Good news is, it's a plane on supply route up the mountain range with two extra seats on board. We've got beds and food to spare until then. Make yourselves at home in the guardsmen's quarters."

Kim couldn't help but feel that the guardsmen's quarters wan't all that much better than the prisoners. There was a cafeteria that was marginally cleaner than the rest of the facility, a kind of break room with a few couches and a t.v., and a hallway that held the various rooms for the guards. Each room had a bunk bed and some furniture for clothes, and not much else. Kim was able to catch glimpses of the other rooms as they passed, each was decorated and personalized with pictures, miscellaneous books, and extra pillows from home. Kim and Jake's temporary room, however, was the last empty room they had available. The room was bland and rather dark, but they came with wardrobes that had extra pajamas for them to sleep in.

They ate dinner with the rest of the staff. Most of them were rather nice and there were some that were only a few years older than Kim herself. Jake made the occasional joke or wise-crack between bites, but otherwise he was silent and twitchy. He was constantly tapping his foot or his fingers or staring into space. He'd borrowed the facility's phone - there was no wireless signal this far out - to call his sister. She assured him that she could handle herself until they got back tomorrow and that Ron was handling the whole thing surprisingly well. He'd only run around screaming three times since that morning.

They slipped into their borrowed pajamas and beds with the rest of the late-shift guards around eight thirty. Kim told Jake he was welcome to stay up later and watch T.V. or something - no WiFi in the mountains either - but he just shook his head. Kim recognized the look from Ron, actually. He wore the same face for almost a week the summer after graduation when Hana had a cold but the Seniors were buying out Hollywood for the purpose of...what was it again? All the plots were a little hard to keep straight, after a while. That's probably why the government kept files.

Kim was contemplating these things from where she lay on her bed, not long after they'd clicked off the lights, when she heard a sigh from the bed above her. She heard Jake's voice through his pillow mumble, "I knew this would happen."

Unwilling to give up Jake's chance to talk, she leaned her head over to look up the side of Jake's mattress. "Which part, the plane parts lying in the woods, the stranded, or the itchy clothes?"

Jake shuffled so he could look down the side of the bed while still clutching his pillow. "I don't know, something." His eyes darted around the dark room, no doubt seeing more than her own eyes could - dragon powers, and all that. "Something bad always happens. It's like, one of those universal rules or something."

Kim's head tilted so some of her hair was falling off the bed and brushing the floor. She kept telling herself she needed to get it cut. "If you knew something would happen, why did you come?"

Jake hunched his shoulders. "I don't know...selfishness, boredom. Stupidity or aversion to logic are valid options."

"You're not stupid," Kim insisted. "You're one of the smartest people I've ever met. Maybe not school smart or mechanically smart, sure-" Jake didn't protest but his lips tightened "-but the way you talk about the magical world? You've got a lot weighing on you and-"

"Stop." Jake moved so he could look her in the eyes while talking. His own eyes reflected oddly in the sliver of light from the hallway. "I know where this is going, and I don't want pity. You're being nice and all but you keep giving me these sad looks like I've been deprived a childhood, or something. I handle myself just fine."

"I don't pity you," Kim shuffled under his unconvinced stare. "Okay, I pity you a little. But I respect you, too. From what I saw yesterday, I'm not the only one. Everyone knows about the many feats of the American Dragon. It may seem terrible now, but everything seems terrible in high school. College is worlds better, I promise."

Kim thought she'd sounded pretty reassuring, and Jake was starting to look a little reassured, too, but whatever progress she might have been making on getting Jake to open up to her seemed to fall apart in the last sentence. He gave a kind of non-committal grunt before rolling back on his pillow and out of sight. Kim moved her own head back onto her pillow, nursing a crick in her neck, when a murmured "Good night" came from above her.

"Good night."

* * *

**I'M BACK IM ALIVE ITS OKAY IM JUST IN COLLEGE AND ITS A LOT WEIRDER THAN I THOUGHT AND DANG CAMPUS AND HOMEWORK AND WOW**

**Anyway**

**So I don't know why it is I write scenes like that last one. I just really like Kim as the girl who will kick your face across the calendar but also thinks you're really cool and deserve to think the same of yourself while Jake at this point has decided to devote his life to being a dragon because it's what he wants and its what he's supposed to do but Kim wants him to make sure it's his own decisions and he's a teenager and he should still be able to be one - she most certainly was - so she wants to show that she can sympathize but Jake sucked it up a long time ago and just wants to do the right thing now, like hes always wanted to, and that means working on the job, not talking about our feelings. But then he's also a rather stereo-typical teenage boy and doesn't do feelings outside of girls as he is a hopeless romantic, poor baby. So wow that was long but that is my little rant of feelings that I hope I've been able to at least start squeaking into this so far.**

**So, yeah, uhm, that's all I've got, really. Updates will do doubt take longer than they did over the summer (I know they weren't that frequent then, either, but school) but I hope you'll all stick around for fun plot twists and character meet-ups and all sorts of other stuff.**

**Also, the next chapter will be from Ron's perspective! I'm excessively excited.**

**-One**


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